


Magical Maladies and Injuries

by coxorangepippin



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hogwarts, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Apprentice Healer Phichit, Apprentice Healer Yuuri, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, HP AU, Hogwarts AU, M/M, Magic AU, Medical School AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-03
Updated: 2018-02-06
Packaged: 2018-12-10 11:27:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 49,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11690685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coxorangepippin/pseuds/coxorangepippin
Summary: "Primum non Nocere", Phichit and Yuuri whispered in unison, their breath steaming slightly in the chilly air. As always, Yuuri felt a slight thrill run up his spine as he said the words, the words that would in a year’s time become a magically binding oath; first, do no harm.----------Yuuri and Phichit, Apprentice Healers at the prestigious St Mungo's Medical School, know that they are unbelievably fortunate to study there, and even more fortunate to live together in the bustling ancient wizarding community of Noke Street, London.But when a mysterious and beautiful patient, afflicted by a rare magical creature and in a deep and apparently endless sleep is brought in, Yuuri finds himself slipping into a strange new world, just the other side of dreams.Can he escape before it's too late?Harry Potter/Sleeping Beauty AU





	1. Primum Non Nocere

In a small flat in London, in a narrow alley just off the ancient cobbled road of Noke Street, peace reigned. The early morning sun slanted through the high, mullioned windows in a kaleidoscope of fractured beams; the old, warped glass cast them into every corner of the silent living room as though searching for something. The air had the first hint of autumnal freshness in it, the lingering heat of summer slowly exhaling from the old stone building, and the chill of dark evenings and short days settling in for another season.

" _Oooooh...._ "

A sudden high pitched note rent the air, the stillness abruptly disappearing as though it had run for cover at the interruption. Another note followed the first, reverberating enthusiastically in the morning hush, and after a few moments the sound of running water added an indistinct accompaniment to the now fully-fledged recital.

In his dark bedroom, Yuuri groaned, rolled over, and plastered his pillow around his ears in a vain attempt to muffle the exuberant daily concert that Phichit treated the shower and his toothbrush to. In eight years of living together, Yuuri had never managed to become anything even approaching a morning person, and Phichit’s daily vocal alarm calls always elicited in him a sense of resigned and persistent hatred for all living beings.

The pillow over Yuuri’s ears, he quickly discovered, was doing nothing to muffle the fourth impassioned chorus of ‘ _I Don’t Need No Love Potion_ ’, the latest hit from the Weird Sisters. Pausing only for a few semi-vocalised maledictions against Phichit’s irrepressible vocal chords, Yuuri flung the pillow off his ears and on to the floor, and was immediately subjected to Phichit’s (admittedly very tuneful, though it was far too early to appreciate that) rendition of ‘ _You’re a Keeper (Can’t Score Against You)_ ’.

Yuuri heaved himself upright, the sleep-warmed covers falling off as he sat up, exposing his skin to the slight hint of the coming winter in the air. Without his glasses, everything was slightly blurred, as though seen through a thick sheet of rain, but Yuuri was very practiced at operating on autopilot in the mornings. He reached for his wand, shoving it unceremoniously into the pocket of his pyjama shorts, and let his bare feet hit the cold wooden floor, with a slight wince at the sudden chill. Stumbling to the door and out to the small kitchen, Yuuri muttered the activation word ‘ _ambrosia’_ to the coffee pot on the blue-tiled sideboard, his voice still rough with the early hour. The pot immediately began to brew the coffee that Yuuri was sure must compose ninety eight percent of his body mass by now, the fumes penetrating the sleep-fog that still clung to his thoughts.

As his mind ground unwillingly into action, Yuuri retrieved his glasses from where he had left them on the counter the night before, and placed them slightly crookedly on his nose (Phichit had pointed out several years before that the reason his glasses never lay flat was because his ears were slightly lopsided, and Yuuri had been very self-conscious about it until Phichit had made the very reasonable point that it was, in fact, adorable). Blinking as the room came into focus, Yuuri saw the sunlight slanting through the jigsaw of window panes, and smiled slightly; at least if he had to be awake at this god-forsaken hour, it was a nice day for it.

The coffee pot interrupted his musings, saying in Phichit’s maddeningly cheerful voice, ‘ _Coffee for Yuuri Katsuki! Time to become a functioning human being!_ ’

As he did every day, Yuuri snorted slightly at the pre-recorded message, unable to deny the justice of it. Pushing his dark hair out of his eyes, Yuuri poured two mugs of coffee, leaving one on the counter for whenever Phichit should decide to finish his morning shower recital. _Which won’t be long_ , he thought as he heard Phichit start up the traditional finale piece, ‘ _Accio! (Give Back My Heart)_ ’, a particularly strident anthem that Phichit always claimed put him in a fighting mood to face the day.

Yuuri flopped down on the overstuffed blue sofa that faced the fireplace, and murmured ‘ _incendio’_ , feeling the flames that immediately sprang to life warming the air. He looked up at the photograph hanging over the fireplace; him and Phichit, both clutching letters emblazoned with the wand-and-bone emblem of St Mungo's, arms around each other and eyes lit up with laughter as they waved their letters triumphantly, their blue and bronze Ravenclaw ties untidily untucked. Phichit’s tanned skin glowed in the sun, and Yuuri’s round cheeks were flushed, his eyes crinkled shut as he laughed; Guang Hong, who had taken the photo, had been laughing too, evidenced by the perspective of the photograph wavering slightly up and down.

 _Ah, the innocence of youth_ , Yuuri thought fondly as he sipped his coffee, feeling the last mists of sleep receding with the bitterness on his palate. He and Phichit had been so proud, so happy when they had received their acceptances on to the Apprentice Healers Programme; they still were, when they weren’t trying to memorise forty spells per night, or being drilled on the minute and apparently infinite bones in the hand. Guang Hong had been accepted too; their Head of House had been delighted with them, three Ravenclaws accepted from one year being an unheard of feat, and had confidently predicted that they all had brilliant futures ahead of them.

Footsteps sounded behind Yuuri on the wooden floor, along with a steady staccato accompaniment of dripping. Yuuri turned to see Phichit, wearing his Apprentice Healer’s green robes and with sopping wet hair, practically pirouetting into the room with a smile that could dazzle a man at twenty paces. As always, Yuuri gave him an exasperated sigh in response, and as always, Phichit reached for the coffee mug (without looking; how many hundreds of times had the mug been placed exactly on that spot on the counter by this point?) and dropped on to the sofa next to Yuuri, flinging his still damp feet over Yuuri’s lap with an incandescently cheerful ‘ _Good morning!_ ’.

“I see you’ve changed your morning recital programme,” Yuuri grumbled, shoving Phichit’s damp feet off his lap with a huff.

“I have a very demanding audience, dear child,” sang Phichit, without even a speck of remorse, thought Yuuri grumpily. “The towel rack had begun to complain that I was losing my edge, that my style had become stale and my pizzazz had become pedestrian, that-”

Yuuri didn’t let him finish, flicking his wand slightly out of Phichit’s line of sight and causing his coffee to freeze solid just as he took a sip; the resulting block of ice thudded into Phichit’s nose, causing him to gasp and splutter and ending his morning soliloquy. Yuuri laughed, and ran quickly out of the room before Phichit could retaliate, grabbing his towel from where it hung on his door and seeking sanctuary in the white-tiled bathroom. Listening to the now almost-inaudible threats of dire harm to his person, Yuuri smiled, turning the shower to his preferred almost-boiling temperature before stepping under the cascade, letting the heat relax his shoulder muscles, which were still tight and hunched from unhappiness at the early hour.

As he washed, Yuuri mentally ran through the material that they were going to cover in the lecture that morning. Thankfully, it was one of his better subjects, Magical Beasts and Their Properties, with Healer Killigrew. Today they were covering the recreational use of magical animals, which some wizards were apparently very fond of.

 _Billywigs, cause levitation, but some wizards have violent allergic reactions, which must be treated within a day or levitation can become semi-permanent,_ thought Yuuri as he soaped under his arms.

Pouring shampoo into his hand, letting the scent of lavender fill his nostrils, Yuuri continued his mental catalogue. _Anker-beetle stings, cause lucid dreaming, but give the skin an unpleasant mauve tinge for several days, unless treated with…with…_ Yuuri finished washing his hair, and as he stepped out of the shower and wrapped a towel around himself, the answer came to him. _Nettle-essence!_ he thought triumphantly, brushing his teeth and finally running a comb through his tangled dark hair.

As Yuuri left the bathroom, a sudden deluge of ice cold water soaked his shower-warmed skin, shocking the breath from his lungs. He stopped gasping in shock just in time to see Phichit’s ankle whipping round the corner into the living room.

Yuuri knew that they had to leave soon, knew that lateness was frowned upon most severely by the tutors at St Mungo’s Medical School, but slights to his honour such as this could not go unpunished. Shaking himself to bring some life back into his frozen limbs, his wet hair spraying water droplets like a spring shower, Yuuri seized his wand firmly in one hand and gave chase.

 

**********

 

Both Yuuri and Phichit were almost late that morning. Their increasingly extravagant retaliations against each other, and their hysterical laughter, had only been halted by the clock on their mantle-piece announcing in a peevish voice, “Quarter to eight! You’re going to be late!”

Yuuri (whose hair was now waist length and a daring shade of fuchsia) and Phichit (whose eyebrows were electric blue, and whose skin had a fetching polka-dot pattern), had promptly panicked, taken far longer than they ought to to reverse their spells because they kept catching sight of each other and falling into helpless laughter again, and cleaned up the battleground of their living room.

They had apparated, breathless and with a growing sense of impending doom that increased with every minute that passed, to the small, dingy doorway that stood next to the large, dingy shop front of Purge & Dowes Ltd., the entrance to St Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries. Muggles, noticing nothing unusual about their moss-green robes due to the heavy notice-me-not spells that warded the doorway, bustled past in their suits and heavy coats, intent on their morning commute.

Leaning forward, Phichit pressed the buzzer for Number 43, and the intercom screen that was half hanging off the wall blinked to life, grouchily muttering ‘ _P_ _assword_?’.

‘ _Primum non Nocere_ ’, Phichit and Yuuri whispered in unison, their breath steaming slightly in the chilly air. As always, Yuuri felt a slight thrill run up his spine as he said the words, the words that would in a year’s time become a magically binding oath; _first, do no harm_.

The door swung open at their words, its long strips of peeling grey paint swaying with the motion, and they rushed inside. Their shoulders were crammed together for a moment in the threshold, the long hallway that opened ahead of them disproportionately wide and airy considering the size of the door they had just come through. Their footsteps echoing on the pale stone floor, they rushed forwards, Phichit a few steps ahead as always, hoping against hope that they might reach the School in time for their eight o’clock lecture.

When they emerged, blinking from the dim light of the passageway, they were immediately engulfed in the hubbub that always filled the central hall of St Mungo’s Medical School, and were buffeted slightly by the tide of students that were heading in every direction, carrying books for lectures or protective goggles for practicals.

Looking above them at the enormous gold and blue clock which hung on the far wall, Phichit and Yuuri saw with a flood of relief that they were not going to be disciplined for tardiness.

“Five minutes to go,” Phichit panted, his face relaxing as he saw the time. “We made it!”

Yuuri, too out of breath to reply, just smiled, looking up at the familiar hall, that nonetheless was still breathtaking even after a year of seeing it nearly every day.

St Mungo’s Medical School, located next door to the Hospital, was an enormous, circular building, constructed in pale sandstone, with a white marble floor that caused every footstep to echo. The result was a cheerful hubbub, which spiralled up into the air, reached the ceiling and bounced back down to the ears of those below, hurrying to classes or calling to their friends, the green robes of the Apprentice Healers glowing in the spell-maintained perpetual golden sunlight. High, wide doors stood at intervals of several feet around the edge of the circular hall, their polished wood inscribed with runes, inlaid in mother-of-pearl, which flashed in a multitude of colours. Small paper birds twittered in the air, bearing messages from one room to another, their fluting voices adding to the general cheerful cacophony.

The real treasure of the School, however, was the ceiling. It was one perfect, unjoined dome of glass, a hundred feet in diameter, which stretched across the sky like one half of an impossibly large bubble, showing the blue heavens and banks of white cloud above it. On the surface of the glass, constantly shifting and melting into new shapes, were the outlines of the planets and the stars, their paths mapped out in gold, an ever-changing glimpse into the firmament; the shadows cast by the planets’ dance appeared on the faces of those below like small blots of ink, disappearing before they could be wiped away.

Yuuri loved every inch of this building, the place that he had dreamed about attending ever since, at the age of seven, he had first decided he wanted to be a Healer. No matter how hard his workload, and no matter how bone-tired he was, the sight of the hall always made his heart lift slightly; it was tangible evidence that he was really here, in this School, that he had almost achieved his dream.

Phichit caught sight of the softened expression on Yuuri’s face, and smiled to himself, knowing that Yuuri was always cheered by the sight of the main hall. To Phichit, the sight was a challenge, a reminder that although he was here, he still had a long way to go; they hadn’t qualified yet, after all.

Seizing Yuuri’s sleeve, Phichit dragged him in the direction of Lecture Hall Three, wending their way through the crowd with only minimal buffeting. They reached the tall, open door, and slid through it into the room affectionately known by the students as the Oyster. Polished wooden benches slanted down from the doorway in staggered ranks, eventually reaching a circular dais that stood at the very centre of the room ( _Like a pearl_ , Guang Hong had explained on their first day, _hence the nickname, apparently_ ).

Their lecturer, the ancient and wizened Healer Killigrew, was already standing at the polished brass podium, shuffling his parchment and peering over his glasses at the door to see whether everyone had arrived. Yuuri and Phichit smiled sheepishly at him, and slid into place next to Guang Hong, who murmured a greeting.

Yuuri laid his parchment and quill out on the desk, and prepared for three hours of Killigrew’s wheezing voice. He sighed quietly. It still felt far too early to be awake.

 

***********

  
  
When Yuuri and Phichit emerged from the dingy, overhung doorway at six o’clock that evening, they were both covered in small ink splashes, and their eyes were aching from several hours of constant note-taking. The lecture had been very informative, but very dense, and they had had to spend several hours in the library afterwards cross referencing and double checking facts until they were confident that they had understood the subject matter; Healer Killigrew had decided to test them next week on the material they had covered so far.

Phichit groaned, his usually sunny expression clouded over as he looked at the patchwork of ink splashes on his hands.

“I don’t think these will ever come out,” Phichit said, voice doleful and expression downcast. Yuuri knew that Phichit was more than half joking, but it _had_ been a long day; Yuuri could feel several knots in his shoulders, and his spine felt permanently curled into a semicircle from where he had bent over his books.

“Shall I cook tonight?” Yuuri asked, and Phichit’s expression immediately brightened, his eyes regaining their sparkle. Yuuri was, without a doubt, the best cook that Phichit had ever had the pleasure of sampling recipes for, and the prospect of one of his meals made even a surprise exam seem less ominous.

“You always know just what to say,” said Phichit, linking his arm through Yuuri’s. “Shall we?”

Yuuri nodded, and Phichit spun on the spot, apparating them with a resounding crack to a small alleyway behind Temple Underground Station. They had long ago (neither of them could quite remember when) fallen into the pattern of taking it in turns to apparate; it wasn’t strictly speaking more convenient, but by now it had become a tradition, and neither of them wanted to be the one to break it.

Standing in the shadowed alleyway, Yuuri cast notice-me-not charms over both of them, and the two of them set out into the sparse crowd of lawyers and businesspeople streaming out of the underground station and walking along the edge of the Thames, the crowd peppered with the odd wizard or witch wearing robes or a partially-successful attempt at muggle dress.

Temple Underground Station was a very popular apparition destination, due to its proximity to the ancient wizarding settlement of Noke Street. Noke Street was far older than Diagon Alley, having existed long before muggles had populated the banks of the river; then, it had been nothing more than an apothecary and a few robe shops, but now it was a wide and winding cobbled street, on which one could buy everything from broomsticks to beetle eyes. Due to the constant stream of wizarding traffic, the implementation of the Statute of Secrecy had caused some problems, until some bright young thing in the Ministry of Magic had hit upon the idea of placing befuddlement wards into the cobbles of the street themselves, effectively casting a wide umbrella of safety for those wizards who had not quite mastered muggle dress codes.

Nowadays, these wards were located in the Underground station, in everything from the railings to the roof tiles. Even though Yuuri and Phichit didn’t technically need the extra security of a notice-me-not charm, their robes could draw attention from the odd muggle who had enough magical blood in their heritage to see through the wards, and it was better to be cautious. As they walked along the edge of the river, both Phichit and Yuuri felt their cramped muscles loosening, their posture becoming more human and less gnarled tree root.

Finally, they reached their destination, which was entirely invisible to the muggles hurrying by them. They turned away from the grey waters of the Thames, and hurried down an almost hidden right hand turn which ended abruptly in a tall archway.

Phichit and Yuuri were dwarfed by the arch, which was made of pale sandstone, standing unsupported and majestic at the end of the empty cobbled street. Flowers of all colours, which were always blooming regardless of the season, wound around it, their petals like careless splashes of bright ink against the stone. The weathered inscription ‘Noke Streete’ was just legible, carved into the keystone high above their heads. Nothing was visible through the archway, though the air within it was strangely distorted as though in a heat haze, the street hidden by wards which had stood for centuries to keep it safe from prying muggle eyes.

Yuuri and Phichit paused in front of the arch, closed their eyes, and stepped forward in unison, their feet echoing against the cobbles. They felt the tingle of the wards run across their skin as they passed through them, and then the air changed, becoming warmer, the light brighter, turning their vision pink against their closed eyelids.

They opened their eyes, and found themselves, as always, in a small green courtyard, walled in by ancient red bricks which were covered in the same bright flowers as the archway, their perfume scenting the air. In the centre of the courtyard was a circular lawn, and in the centre of the lawn was a freshwater spring; it was called Maiden’s Love by the local wizarding population, having supposedly been created by a wizard to allow a mermaid he had fallen in love with to visit him, and the water was meant to possess curative properties for the heartbroken. The water of the spring bubbled constantly, the slight splashing a comforting background noise.

Yuuri and Phichit paused for a moment to toss a knut onto the lawn by Maiden’s Love (‘for luck’, they murmured in unison), and walked around the spring on the circular cobbled path, finally stepping through an old, low wooden door in the brick wall.

Noke Street stretched before them, a riot of colour and sound, the bright awnings of the various shops a cheerful sight after the dusty books of the library. Smiling, Phichit and Yuuri guided their steps towards Amcott’s, a small grocer's shop run by old Mrs Amcott, who had a soft spot for them (‘Such handsome and polite boys!’ she always sighed to her cat after they had left). Yuuri chose his ingredients with his usual care, and they were followed out of the door by Mrs Amcott’s cheerful goodbyes. Passing Brewiss’ Potion Emporium (which always smelled faintly of sulphur) and Dericott’s Sweet Shop, Yuuri and Phichit wound their way through the crowded cobbled street in companionable silence, letting the noisy tapestry of conversations and haggling and the sharp tap of feet fill their minds.

After a few minutes of walking, the crowds began to peter out, and the shops grew less frequent. Yuuri and Phichit eventually turned, with a glad sigh, on to the small alleyway that led off to the left of Noke Street, with an ancient iron sign built into the cobbles underfoot proclaiming it to be ‘Knyvett Passage’.

Finally, Yuuri and Phichit reached the ancient house that contained their flat. It appeared not so much to have been built by human hands, than to have grown up slowly from the London mud, like an enormous mushroom; its warped mullioned windows and slightly drunken ivy-covered walls gave the impression of a house that had really _lived_. Yuuri and Phichit placed their palms on the cherry red front door, which seemed to think about it for a moment, and then clicked open.

They pounded up the bleached wooden stairs (which never seemed to be at exactly the same angle from day to day), and burst with relief through their front door, both collapsing onto a sofa, their green robes splaying out around them. Phichit flung his arms over his eyes, kicked off his shoes, and declared in a firm voice “I am never moving from this sofa again. Not for you, Yuuri my dove, not for my family, not even for God himself should he manifest before me and beg me to move for the sake of my soul and the souls of every sinner.”

Yuuri, too drained to reply, threw the groceries down behind the sofa in the general direction of the kitchen, and sank back into the overstuffed cushions, his eyes closed and the pages he had tried to memorise that day seemingly branded on the inside of his eyelids. _Five minutes_ , he thought, _just let me rest for five minutes._

The sun, which had shone so enthusiastically through the tipsy window panes that morning, had clearly tired of this activity, and began to sink below the horizon; the fire, charmed to sense the encroaching darkness, flickered to life, filling the flat with warmth and the occasional spout of sparks.

Yuuri sighed, and heaved himself off the sofa with a resigned expression. Phichit, who true to his word hadn’t moved an inch, lifted his arm slightly to reveal one of his dark eyes, and saw Yuuri stand and begin to head towards the kitchen, which stood on the other side of the living room separated only by a low wall which left most of the space open between them.

Within a few minutes, a delicious smell had begun to percolate through the flat, as Yuuri began to chop and stew, to sniff and sample. A further few minutes, and two bowls of steaming noodle soup were produced, thick with mushrooms and the mysterious spice mix that Yuuri would never divulge the exact composition of.

Phichit sat up, declaring that whilst he may not move from that sofa for God, he would move for Yuuri Katsuki’s soup. The two of them sat down at the small wooden table in the bay window, and ate slowly, savouring the warmth of the food and each other’s company. They ran through the material they had covered that day, and Yuuri (whose favourite subject was Magical Beasts) clarified a few things for Phichit. Phichit, whose talents lay in the realms of memory-charms and mind magic, promised to repay the favour for Yuuri next term when they studied the mysteries of the human brain.

After they finished their meal, the two friends played a leisurely game of Gobstones (which Yuuri lost, as always) and then found themselves unable to keep their eyes open any longer. Yawning, they headed towards their bedrooms, murmuring goodnights as they went.

Yuuri shed his robe as he walked across his small bedroom floor towards his bed, and cast a tooth-cleaning charm, unable to face the thought of walking even as far as the bathroom. He collapsed onto his bed face first without removing his glasses, earning himself a painful jab in the bridge of his nose; rolling over, Yuuri placed his glasses on his bedside table, put his wand next to them, and blew out his candle. He felt bone-weary, his mind far more exhausted than his body, and knew that the next day he would have to go through it all again.

As he drifted off to sleep, Yuuri reflected that if he had the chance to choose again, he would choose this life every time. His exhausting studies, his flat with Phichit, their morning prank wars, all of it.

Yuuri’s final semi-coherent thought before he drifted off to sleep was _Maybe tomorrow will be the day that Phichit finally decides that a morning shower-karaoke session isn’t the best idea. Maybe…_

Yuuri’s soft snores and Phichit’s heavy, sleep-slowed breathing were soon the only sounds that could be heard throughout the flat. The bustle of the pedestrians outside had ceased, and the moon had replaced the sun in its inspection of the composition of the windowpanes. The only thing moving in the flat was the photograph of Yuuri and Phichit, waving and smiling, their happiness as bright in the moonlight as it had been the day the photograph was taken.

Yuuri dreamed of billywig stings, and green robes, and an oath that was his future.

 

 

And far away from the peaceful flat on Knyvett Passage, far away from the now still Noke Street, another man lay dreaming.

His canvas tent was lit by a small silver stone which emitted a faint blue light, just enough to see by in the pitch blackness. His silver hair was spread out on the pillow, his pale skin glowing in the light of the seeing-stone. The wind, muffled inside the magical tent, howled around the mountainside on which he was perched, though it did not disturb his sleep.

He dreamed, too, though not of green robes or healing oaths. He dreamed of blood, and fangs, and a sleep without end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this chapter had a LOT of setting up locations etc, but hopefully it wasn't too unbearably dull to read!  
> Just a few notes:  
> -Firstly, the title for this fic might change. I haven't thought of anything I'm completely happy with yet, but I didn't want to not publish it for the sake of a title.  
> -The phrase 'Primum non Nocere' ('first, do no harm') is taken from what most people believe to be the Hippocratic Oath, sworn by medical professionals. Wikipedia informs me that this isn't actually in the oath itself, but the phrase is so lovely in English and Latin that I wanted to use it anyway.  
> -Phichit and Yuuri are both 19 in this fic, and in their second year of medical school, having both been in Ravenclaw at Hogwarts together. 
> 
> Anything else which is unclear, feel free to ask, and I'll do my best to answer!
> 
> Please leave a comment/kudos if you enjoyed <3


	2. Billywigs

The song Phichit chose to startle Yuuri into consciousness the next morning was, in his own humble opinion, inspired.

Ever an early riser, Phichit did not face the black rage that seemed to trouble Yuuri upon waking each morning; consequently, his usual morning routine was radically different to Yuuri’s coffee and murderous intent. When his eyes blinked open at approximately six thirty, Phichit would immediately spring out of bed, eager and awake. He would then make tea, pad through to the living room, his soft step making no noise against the worn floorboards, and settle himself on the overstuffed and ancient sofa. Phichit particularly loved this moment of the morning, when the steam from his tea rose in comforting spirals in the bright air, and the sunlight and the silence seemed to belong to him alone.

This particular Thursday morning, Phichit was seated cross-legged on the sofa, savouring the taste of his morning tea blend as he ran through the schedule for the day. When Phichit noticed that their class that morning was a practical Magical Beasts class based around billywig stings, the appropriate song came to him in a flash of early morning inspiration. _Billywig Billy. Perfect._

Setting his tea down, Phichit retrieved his bathrobe from his room, and stepped into the bathroom with an anticipatory smile, his white teeth flashing in a not-entirely-reassuring way.

He started the shower, hung up his bathrobe on a steam-rusted curlicue, and waited for the water to reach nearly-boiling point before stepping under the torrent. Phichit stretched his shoulders under the heat of the water, rolling his neck to get his hair wet, the dark strands plastering themselves over his forehead. There was one more moment of silence. And then Phichit took a deep breath in, feeling the steam fill his nose, and began.

“ _You’ve left me on cloud nine, you’ve given me the skies…”_

The notes bounced enthusiastically off the bathroom tiles, not hindered in the slightest by the hiss of the shower, and penetrated the thick wood of Yuuri’s bedroom door with ease. Phichit always appreciated the effect of the bathroom on his vocals, and this morning was no different; as the first ringing notes faded into the steam, Phichit struck a dramatic pose under the showerhead and tried to sing every instrument in the jazzy, early 1920's accompaniment at once.

The first indication that his recital was having the desired effect was a muffled thud that sounded exactly like a Yuuri-shaped object falling out of bed. Phichit smiled as he continued his song, the steam wafted into fantastic shapes by the dramatic sweep of his arm.

“ _Just like a **billywig sting** , you make my heart rise…”_

Phichit emphasised the words in the hope that Yuuri, though in all probability still more than half asleep, might appreciate his genius.

There was the sound of running feet in the corridor, and then Phichit found his recital rudely interrupted by a ferocious banging on the front door. He smiled, shut off the water, and sang in his most consciously irritating morning-bright voice, “Yuuri! Beloved! Is that your gentle knock upon the door that I hear?”

“I GET IT. I GET IT. BILLYWIG STINGS. YOU’RE A GENIUS. IF YOU KEEP SINGING I SWEAR I WILL EVISCERATE YOU.”

Yuuri’s voice, even through the door, was gravelly and deep and entirely livid, with a volume only usually achieved by an entire Quidditch stadium cheering at once. The iron bathroom fixtures vibrated slightly in their moorings.

Phichit smiled again, and sang back “But my dove! My only bright star! Do you not adore my songs? They are for you alone! I only wish to brighten your morning with my dulcet tones! You break my heart with your callous words!”

There was a brief pause, and then Phichit heard Yuuri’s retreating steps, accompanied by a continuous stream of what were no doubt extremely creative and original threats. Phichit grinned, and stepped out of the shower, wrapping his bathrobe around his steam-warmed body and congratulating himself on another successful wake-up call.

 

 

When Phichit emerged from his room a few minutes later, fully dressed in his green apprentice robes and still disgustingly cheerful, he found Yuuri sitting on the sofa, silhouetted against the morning sun. The scene was achingly familiar, and even Yuuri’s scowl didn’t dim the sudden bloom of warmth in Phichit’s heart as he picked up the coffee mug that Yuuri had left out for him. He joined him on the sofa, dropping on to the worn cushions and slinging his still damp feet up onto Yuuri’s lap as always. He ignored Yuuri’s grunt of annoyance, wiggling his toes into a more comfortable position under Yuuri’s elbow.

As Phichit lay back into the cushions, saying nothing to Yuuri yet as his coffee mug was still only half drunk, he studied Yuuri’s profile in the morning light. It was now as familiar to Phichit as his own face, Yuuri’s expressions as easily readable as their textbooks. Yuuri’s slightly wrinkled brow, glazed eyes and slightly pursed lips told Phichit clearly that it would be a few more minutes before he was available for conversation.

Smiling slightly, Phichit sipped his coffee, still studying Yuuri’s expression, which was growing less murderous by the minute as the caffeine entered his bloodstream. Phichit allowed his mind to drift as he waited for Yuuri to speak, remembering countless mornings in Ravenclaw tower; the bright sun that hit their lofty windows which always seemed a personal affront to Yuuri, the sight of his sleep-mussed hair peeking out from under the royal blue duvets on their dormitory beds, and the many late nights when Yuuri’s face was lit only by the moonlight which seemed brighter in Ravenclaw tower than anywhere else.

Yuuri finally interrupted his musings, apparently now awake enough to form sentences.

“You know, you could just set an alarm clock for me.”

The slightly smiling twist of Yuuri’s lips made Phichit smile in response, and he wiggled closer on the sofa until he could lean his head on Yuuri’s shoulder, inhaling the familiar mingled scents of coffee and Yuuri’s hair.         

“But then, beloved, how would you find the strength to face the day? Surely my nightingale’s voice is the only thing that could possibly lure you from slumber, night-owl that you are?”

Phichit tilted his head upwards, peering into Yuuri’s face in earnest entreaty, and earned himself a snort and an elbow in the ribs.

“Well, o nightingale, I have to shower. I’ll be ready in ten minutes. My turn to apparate?”

Phichit nodded, and fell sideways on to the sofa as Yuuri stood up and he lost his leaning post. Yuuri’s feet pattered out of the room, and Phichit looked up at the photo over the mantelpiece, his smile and Yuuri’s perpetually radiant. He heard the sudden splash of the shower, and lay down on the sofa to wait, softly humming to himself the end of the song that Yuuri had curtailed prematurely.

_“Although I’m on cloud nine, please set me free! Oh, my billywig Billy, please don’t sting me!”_

***********  


Yuuri finally emerged from his bedroom, fully dressed in his Apprentice Healer’s robes and almost completely awake, half an hour before their morning practical was due to start. Phichit was still lying on the sofa, feigning sleep and snoring improbably loudly. He sat up with an exaggerated start when he heard Yuuri’s footsteps, and blinked his almond shaped eyes at Yuuri in apparent astonishment.

“My dear child! You were gone for such an age I had begun to fear you were lost forever! I have been asleep for a hundred years waiting for you to return!”

Yuuri smiled, and leaned over the sofa, prodding Phichit in the stomach.

Phichit huffed slightly, and stood up, extending a hand to Yuuri as he did so.

“Shall we?”

Yuuri reached out and grasped Phichit’s warm fingers, and a moment later the two found themselves outside the dilapidated door that seemed to look dingier with every passing day. Phichit sighed.

“I know it’s excellent anti muggle security and all that, but I wish they could give us a slightly more aesthetically pleasing sight to start the day; it’s an awfully ugly portal for a beautiful creature such as myself to pass through.”

Yuuri smiled, and leaned forwards to press the button for Number 43; the buzzer crackled into life immediately, and Phichit and Yuuri leaned forwards to murmur _Primum non Nocere_ in unison to the unseen doorkeeper. The door clicked open, and the two green-clad figures vanished into the passageway, disappearing from the sight of the muggles streaming past.

They emerged into the great central hall, their robes glowing in the charmed golden sunlight, and Yuuri and Phichit looked at each other. They weren’t usually early, and therefore this sudden window of time was unexplored territory; what to do with a whole half hour until their practical started?

Their dilemma was solved for them by the sound of their names being called from across the hall, the hubbub of voices and the clatter of feet not yet deafening as so few students arrived this early.

“Phichit! Yuuri!”

Guang Hong was standing by the door to the lecture hall, waving energetically at them from across the central hall, his face briefly covered by a splash of shadow from the ever-changing pattern of the heavens above.

Yuuri and Phichit walked across the marble floor, their footsteps echoing, and grinned at Guang Hong. He was slightly shorter than both of them, his sandy brown hair and permanent faint blush unchanged since they had first met him at the age of eleven at the Sorting Feast. His heart shaped face had grown slightly more chiselled over the years, and his voice no longer shook when he spoke to strangers, but other than that he remained as boyish as ever.

“How are you both?” Guang Hong asked, his voice warm as he took in Yuuri’s usual morning untidiness and Phichit’s radiant smile. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you for days, but I keep forgetting; Seung-Gil is having a party tonight at his flat in Diagon Alley, and he asked me to invite you. Want to come? I think a fair few Hogwarts people will be there.”

Phichit and Yuuri briefly made eye contact, before turning back to Guang Hong. Phichit, always the spokesman for both of them, said with an elegant flourish of his hand, “We’d be delighted, of course. Can we bring anything? And how are you? Did you cope alright with that ghastly lecture the other day on mandrakes?”

As the three old friends caught up, trading stories on their successes and disasters of the past week, the central hall began to fill up around them, their voices having to strain harder and harder to rise above the cheerful shouts of students and the echoing ring of hundreds of pairs of feet rushing to their lecture rooms. The rest of their class gathered around them, waiting on Healer Killigrew to let them into the practical lecture room, all discussing the experiment they were about to do; it was one of the most notorious on the syllabus.

A few minutes before nine o’clock, Killigrew arrived, his shuffling footsteps lost in the general din, so that he appeared to manifest behind the students with no warning. Reaching out a wrinkled palm, he placed it on the polished wooden door, which swung open to reveal the practical lecture room, which was as different from their usual lecture rooms as the dingy entrance to the School was from the splendour of the central hall.

Yuuri and Phichit peered in, eager to get a glimpse of the fabled Billywig Sting Experiment.

They saw a large, circular room, illuminated by golden light which came from a smaller replica of the great hall’s enormous bubble-like ceiling. There were no golden patterns on this glass, giving the students an uninterrupted view of the sky above, which was a cloudless cornflower blue; it looked like it would be one of the last really fine days of September. Dark wooden tables were spaced evenly around the room, and Yuuri could make out small cages of electric blue billywigs on each one. The most unusual aspect of the room was the floor; it was formed of one enormous slab of a diamond hard blue opalline substance, which contained shifting rainbows of fiery white and pink. Yuuri had heard of this room before; the floor was blue fire opal, charmed to never break or smash, and any potions or venom spilled onto it would immediately be neutralised. The spells which created it were jealously guarded by the librarian, and had never been used outside the St Mungo’s Medical School.

Killigrew stepped on to the blue opal floor, and shuffled his way across to the teacher’s desk, motioning for the class to follow behind him. Yuuri and Phichit made their way to one of the tables, and were swiftly joined by Guang Hong and Sara Crispino, a girl in their class that none of them knew very well; she had been educated at the Italian magical school of San Nicola, and had only recently moved to London for her medical training. She was hauntingly beautiful, with violet eyes and a golden tan, but rumour had it that she had a very intimidating brother; this had discouraged some of the students from approaching her. Yuuri smiled at her as she joined their table, and she smiled back, her eyes crinkling half shut, making her beauty less forbidding.

As Killigrew organised his many sheaves of parchment, Phichit peered more closely at the cage full of billywigs. The tiny insects looked something like airborne walnuts, their tiny pudgy bodies wrinkled and an electric shade of blue, their circular wings filling the air with a faint, frantic whirring. Phichit stretched out his finger to prod one of them through the bars of the cage, but Yuuri grabbed his wrist to prevent him just as Killigrew began to speak.

“No doubt,” he began in his wheezing tenor, “You have all been very much looking forward to today’s practical. I understand it is talked of among the upper years as one of the most…‘fun’…” Here he paused, and coughed in a slightly disgusted way, “That you will participate in throughout your studies.”

Yuuri and Phichit caught each other’s eye and grinned.

“However,” continued Killigrew, his wrinkled hands gripping the edge of the desk, “Anyone abusing this practical for their own amusement will find themselves swiftly ejected, and a note made on their record. Do I make myself quite clear?”

There was a general murmur of assent among the students, as they tore their eyes away from the tiny cages.

“Very well. Today, we will be studying the billywig, a creature which is occasionally used by the more foolish of wizardkind as a recreational drug. See the sting at the base of their spines?”

There was a shuffling sound as many pairs of feet crowded closer to the cages to get a look; Yuuri saw Sara shudder slightly as she saw the vicious looking barbed stings at the bottom of the billywig’s body.

“When stung, a wizard is able to levitate unaided. This effect can last anywhere from fifteen minutes to twenty four hours, and if abused, that is to say used repeatedly over a number of months, can become permanent.”

There was anther general murmur among the students, this time of interest tinged with anticipation.

“Today, as you should all know from your preparatory work, we shall be examining these effects. Each of you will be stung by the billywig in turn, and the others on your table must apply the counterspell. Are we all clear? Very well. Begin!”

Yuuri, Phichit, Guang Hong and Sara looked at each other apprehensively.

“Well, my dears, I don’t mind admitting that I don’t want to go first,” said Phichit, raising one perfectly shaped eyebrow. “Not that I don’t have complete confidence in your abilities, but those stings look unpleasantly enormous.”

Guang Hong and Yuuri both opened their mouth to echo the sentiment, but they were cut off by Sara, her Italian accent almost gone after only a few months in London.

“I’ll go first,” she said, her jaw set and her purple eyes determined. “Do you all know the counterspell?”

The three of them nodded, and intoned in a practiced unison, “ _Cadere_.”

“Right then,” Sara said, and without further ado, she reached out to the billywigs' cage and stuck her finger through the bars. The tiny insects became instantly enraged at the intrusion, their wings whirring faster than ever, and one of them flew forward and jabbed its sting into Sara’s finger, making her wince slightly.

The effect was immediate. Her feet left the floor, and Yuuri saw that her violet eyes were wide and shocked as she drifted upwards; she rose about three feet, and then stopped, with only empty air beneath her soles.

Sara blinked once, and then began to laugh, her clear voice rising above the hubbub of the room. Within a few seconds, other students began to rise into the air; Yuuri saw Murphy rise about ten feet, his face white and terrified, while most students stopped at about five.

The room was suddenly full of laughter, as the students in the air began to lose their terror of falling. Sara looked down at them all and grinned, her white teeth flashing against her golden tan.

“Anyone want to get me down?” she asked.

Yuuri grinned back, and raised his wand, pointing it at Sara’s midriff, which was now at his eye level.

“ _Cadere_!” he intoned, and Sara fell gracefully downwards, landing lightly on her feet.

“That was _fun_!” she said, her eyes sparkling.

Yuuri felt emboldened by her success, and said in a determined tone, “I’ll go next.”

Phichit looked at him with an unidentifiable emotion in his eyes, as Yuuri boldly stuck his finger into the cage. He felt a brief, sharp sting, which reminded him of the time he had angered a garden gnome as a child and it had bitten his arm; and then, quite suddenly, he was rising, rising into the air, the ground dropping away at a steady pace.

When he reached about ten feet, Yuuri began to wonder. When he reached, twenty, he began to worry. When he hit the ceiling at approximately fifty feet in the air, he began to panic.

The rest of the class stopped what they were doing, and turned to look upwards when Yuuri’s head had collided with the glass with a ringing crash. Luckily, the glass seemed to have impeded his rise, but Yuuri could hear his heart hammering in his ears and his hands beginning to sweat as he saw how far below him the ground now was. He saw Phichit’s face, white and scared, turned up to look at him, and saw that his mouth was open in horror.

“Um…Healer Killigrew?” Yuuri breathed, his voice carrying clearly in the now silent classroom, the sea of faces turned up to look at him no more than flesh-coloured blobs in his panic-blurred vision.

“Mm? Yes?” said Killigrew, looking around for the speaker. He peered at the faces of the students, and finally noticed that they were not looking at him; he followed their gaze, and finally saw Yuuri where he was arrested on the ceiling.

“Oh Merlin,” Killigrew sighed, which Yuuri did not find reassuring. “There’s always one.”

Killigrew raised his wand, pointed at Yuuri, and paused.

“Better move out of the way,” he said to the students standing directly underneath Yuuri, who scurried to obey. He then conjured an enormous cushion, and muttered “ _Wingardium leviosa_ ,” guiding it until it was directly underneath Yuuri’s feet.

Yuuri watched the proceedings with a growing sense of alarm. The room beneath his was beginning to waver in his vision as he grew steadily more panicked. “Um…Healer Killigrew, what are you..?”

Killigrew didn’t answer, but having apparently positioned the cushion to his satisfaction, pointed his wand at Yuuri again, and spoke in his cracked and ancient voice, _“Cadere maxima!”_

Yuuri was aware of a brief moment in which he felt suspended as though on a cloud, before he dropped like a stone. The wind rushed past, his ears roaring with it, and he felt as though his stomach was still fifty feet in the air; then, with a world-shattering _whump_ , he landed on the cushion, dead in the centre.

He couldn't be entirely sure, but later he swore he heard Killigrew mutter " _Bullseye_!"

Yuuri sat, completely dazed, with adrenalin coursing through his system.

“Not to worry boy,” he heard as though through a great veil of clouds, the words muffled. “You’re allergic to billywigs. Not an uncommon ailment, but one which it’s far better to find out about in an enclosed space; you’re lucky you weren’t trying this outside, or you might have gone two hundred feet before stopping.”

This was not calculated to soothe Yuuri’s pounding heart. But then he felt a small, warm hand on his, and he looked up into the concerned violet eyes of Sara Crispino. Phichit was one step behind her, and he seized Yuuri’s other hand, while Guang Hong hovered a few feet away, unsure what to do.

“Yuuri?” Phichit asked, voice wavering and slightly watery.

“I’m…fine?” Yuuri replied, still too dazed to know whether he was fine or not. “I think there were cushioning charms on the cushion.”

Phichit gave a small laugh, and then Yuuri felt strong arms closing around his waist as Phichit seized him in a tight hug.

“Please, please, please,” he said in Yuuri’s ear, voice shaking, “If you’re going to be allergic to something, give me prior notice. I think that aged me fifty years.”

Healer Killigrew made his way back to the teacher’s desk, and gestured vaguely towards where Yuuri sat.

“There, class,” he said dryly, “We have a textbook example of why billywigs are illegal for recreational use. Allergies are not common, affecting around fifty wizards in ten thousand, but they can cause some fairly dramatic reactions. I think we will leave the class there for today. Three feet on the use of magical creatures in recreational contexts on my desk by next Wednesday, please.”

The students gathered up their things, and began filing from the classroom, talking in low voices about what had just happened. Yuuri detached Phichit’s arm with a gentle push, and stood on slightly wobbly legs, Sara holding on to one of his arms.

“Well that was eventful,” he said, smiling slightly. He spotted Healer Killigrew approaching from the front of the room, and tried to stand straighter. “I’m so sorry, sir, I didn’t mean to disrupt the lesson.”

“For heaven’s sake, boy, you can’t help your allergies,” said Killigrew, not unkindly. “There’s usually at least one student per year who reacts as you did, though not usually quite so dramatically. At least now you know the counter charm. I would advise that you go home and relax for a few hours.”

He shuffled away again, and Yuuri gathered up his things and left the room, the fire opal floor causing brief rainbows to play across his face until the golden sunlight of the central hall replaced them. He was dimly aware of Guang Hong inviting Sara to the party that evening, but Yuuri still felt far too shaky to engage in the conversation. Phichit maintained a tight grip on his elbow, as though afraid Yuuri would float away again.

Yuuri turned to face Phichit. “We’re still going to the party this evening, yes?”

Phichit blinked at the unexpected question. “If you want to- I mean, if you’re going to be recovered by then?”

Yuuri nodded decisively, his mouth set. “Actually,” he said, his voice speculative, “I think that a party might be exactly what I need.”

 

***********  
  
When Yuuri and Phichit stumbled out of Seung-Gil’s party at three in the morning, they were both swaying gently, their eyes bright and their cheeks flushed with firewhisky. Yuuri was humming the Hogwarts school song, and Phichit had linked their arms together, his face upturned to catch the night-time breeze blowing through Diagon Alley. They ambled in concert up the winding cobbled street, their footsteps ringing, distant shouts from the party drifting out of the house they had just left.

“That,” declared Yuuri with ringing certainty, “was exactly what I needed.”

Phichit laughed, his voice clear on the dark air. “I really feared for your life earlier, you know,” he said, his voice only half joking, as he pulled Yuuri slightly closer to his side. “Of course, of all the people to be allergic to a bloody insect, it had to be Yuuri Katsuki. Why is it always you?”

Yuuri shoved against him slightly, making them both sway. “I’m too drunk to apparate,” he said cheerfully, “Want to floo from the Leaky Cauldron?”

“Admirable candour, dear child,” said Phichit, “To which I can only say that I too am in no state to apparate. Floo it is.”

The lights of the Leaky Cauldron were visible at the end of the Alley, and Yuuri and Phichit made their way towards them, stumbling occasionally on a loose cobblestone. They walked in companionable silence, arms linked, Yuuri occasionally humming a further snatch of song. When they reached the door, they saw that the Cauldron was still crowded; they shoved their way through the seething mass of wizards and witches, the temperature rising with each step they took into the crowd. Yuuri shouted over the heads of the drinkers “Alright to use the Floo, Tom?”

Though the barman’s answer was lost in the din, Yuuri saw his nod. He and Phichit fought their way over to the fireplace, and grabbed a handful of Floo powder, spilling some on the ancient rug, but getting enough in the fire to turn the flames an eye smarting shade of emerald.

They stepped into the fire together, and shouted in unison, “Noke Street!”

There was a sickening sense of motion, and Yuuri wished he had had slightly less to drink, before the short journey ended and the two of them fell outwards on to the carpet of Rowena’s Arms, the pub near the entrance of Noke Street. The drinkers there cheered as they sprawled on the rug, and then went back to their conversations, as Yuuri and Phichit stood and dusted themselves off, their faces flaming red.

Elbowing their way through the crowd, Yuuri and Phichit finally gained the blessedly cool night air of the courtyard, with the fountain of Maiden’s Love gently bubbling in the centre. The two of them paused for a moment, watching the fountain in the moonlight, before both reaching into their pockets and tossing a knut onto the grass, which was already crowded with coins.

They strolled round the fountain, and pushed open the low door, finding themselves in a nearly deserted Noke Street, the daytime bustle now silent, the street gilded with silver light.

As they began the walk home, Yuuri yawned, and Phichit echoed him. “That,” said Yuuri, “Was fun.”

“I can’t remember the last time we went to a party. Was it forty three years ago? In a previous life? Before St Mungo’s?” Phichit asked, swinging his arms in the still night air, his voice slightly hushed in response to the silent street.

“Must have been,” said Yuuri, yawning again, “And we’ve got that bloody anatomy lecture with Sallowes tomorrow morning, and you know what he’s like.”

Phichit groaned. Sallowes, the anatomy professor, was the most universally disliked of all their teachers, and was draconian with the rulebook.

“We’d better set an alarm; I’m not sure even my bodyclock will wake me up after tonight.”

They finally reached the ironwork sign that proclaimed them to be on Knyvett Passage. Yuuri placed his palm on their front door, and the two of them stumbled up the bleached wooden stairs, still just awake enough to avoid tripping over their ever-changing angles.

When they gained the peace of their living room, both Phichit and Yuuri collapsed on to the sofa, their legs unwilling to carry them even as far as their bedrooms. Yuuri laid his head back against the high sofa back, and Phichit flopped down on to Yuuri’s shoulder, and the two of them sighed in unison.

“Don’t forget to set an alarm,” said Phichit, his voice slurred with tiredness.

“Mm,” said Yuuri, “Just resting my eyes for a minute.”

The two of them lay with their eyes closed, both feeling the weight of exhaustion and alcohol settling heavily into their bones.

Within a few minutes, they were both soundly asleep.

 

***********

  
When the morning light struck Yuuri’s face the next morning, he quickly became aware that something was not as it should be. There was hair in his mouth, and he was far too hot, and his head felt as though a bear had sat on it.

His eyes blinked open, and he realised his glasses were still on. The sunlight made him wince, it was far too bright….

Yuuri’s heart stood still. It was far too bright to be the morning sun. He looked down, and found Phichit sprawled across him, his hair in Yuuri’s mouth and his drool on Yuuri’s robes.

Yuuri’s heart began hammering in his chest. Phichit stirred, and looked up at Yuuri, blinking confusedly at the proximity of their faces.

“Why are you…what…” Phichit trailed off, and Yuuri saw his though process mirrored on Phichit’s expressive face as he saw the sunlight streaming through the window, from almost directly overhead.

They locked eyes, their expression masks of horror, and then both Phichit and Yuuri turned to look at the clock on the mantle.

Eleven o’clock. They had missed the anatomy lecture.

“Oh, no,” said Phichit, his face white and terrified, “Oh no, no, no…”

“Remind me,” said Yuuri, in a soft and careful voice, each word dropping into the warm, sun-filled air like a pebble into a lake, “What Sallowes did to the last people who missed a lecture?”

Phichit’s face grew impossibly paler, tinged with green.

“He threw them out,” he whispered, “He threw them out of the school.”

Yuuri’s heart raced. He locked eyes again with Phichit, and as if on cue, they both jumped up from the sofa and began frantically getting ready, throwing their robes on haphazardly. When they were mostly dressed, Yuuri seized Phichit’s hand and apparated them to the dilapidated doorway, where they practically shouted the password in the terror, and they sprinted the length of the passageway before tearing across the main hall without evening looking up at the ceiling.

They arrived, panting, at the lecture hall. Just in time to see the last student filing out of it.

Sallowes was standing at the front of the room, and he looked up at the sound of their pounding feet and screeching stop.

“Well, well,” he said, his long face contorted in a smile. “The prodigal students. Missing lectures, tut tut.”

Yuuri opened his mouth to try and explain, to excuse, to find any way out of the nightmarish moment, but Sallowes forestalled him.

“My office, three o’clock,” he snapped, the smile disappearing off his face to be replaced by an ugly scowl. He strode up the serried steps, and swept past Yuuri and Phichit where they stood frozen in the doorway, disappearing into one of the offices on the other side of the central hall in a swish of robes and a clack of footsteps.

Yuuri and Phichit met each other’s horrified gazes, and gulped. Three o’clock. Four hours until they learned their fate.

Yuuri’s eyes filled with tears, as he looked up at the glass ceiling with its golden ribbons of ink. He had worked so hard, _so hard_ to get here, and this might be the end of his healing career. Before it had even begun.

Phichit reached out and wordlessly gripped his elbow, guiding him into the empty lecture hall. The two slumped down on a wooden bench, their expressions hopeless.

Four hours until they learned their fate.

It felt like an eternity.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back! Sorry for the interrupted posting schedule; I was away in Europe for a couple of weeks, and then I moved house, and between one thing and another I didn't have much time to write. So here's a long chapter to hopefully make up for it! I should be back on a more regular schedule from now on.
> 
> Please comment/leave kudos if you enjoyed reading <3


	3. Precipice

Yuuri and Phichit would, when reminiscing over a firewhisky in later years, recall that morning as one of the worst of their lives.

The hard wooden bench, pressing into Yuuri’s back as he slumped against it, felt like the only solid object in the world. The rest of his body felt strangely unreal; lighter than air and yet as immoveable as lead, his limbs completely foreign, the loud and terrified heartbeat thudding in his ears drowning out any coherent thoughts with its insistent rhythm. Phichit sat beside him, and Yuuri was dimly aware that he too was staring in horrified incomprehension at the room in front of them; the lecture room that he had always assumed he would continue to study in for many more years. He remembered the first day he had entered the lecture room, his books unstained and unmarked, his robes immaculate, and his parents’ words of encouragement ringing in his ears…

Yuuri’s eyes filled suddenly with tears as he looked down the serried ranks of wooden seating to the raised lecturer’s podium in the front. His dreams of becoming a healer seemed to be evaporating before his eyes, the future he had envisaged for himself rusting and dissolving in the bright morning air. All his years of striving, sleepless nights, working and working and hoping and dreaming…

Yuuri slumped forwards, his terror replaced by a choking misery so sudden and complete that he thought he might drown in it. Quiet, desperate, wracking sobs forced their way from his lungs into the still air of the lecture room, barely disturbing the silence. Yuuri’s throat was burning, and his muscles were clenched, as he curled in upon himself, surrendering to the paroxysms of despair. His mind was filled with half formed images of his parents, their disappointment when they heard, the robes he would have to throw away, and the photograph over the fireplace that they would have to burn now, evidence of a lost future as it was…

And then a warm hand was on the back of his neck, and another was lifting his face, and Yuuri felt himself pulled upright into a tight embrace. The arms encircling him, familiar and comfortable, dissolved the last of Yuuri’s self control. He leaned sideways on the bench into Phichit’s arms, rested his head on Phichit’s shoulder and sobbed unashamedly into the front of his robes.

The two of them sat there together for what felt like an eternity, while the shadows in the empty lecture room slowly changed their direction, uncaring of the two lonely figures that they passed over. Mercifully, no other student entered the room, and the only evidence that they were not the last two humans left in all the world was the hubbub that occasionally flared outside the lecture room, barely penetrating the thick wooden door.

Yuuri eventually felt the black wave of misery begin to subside, wearied by exhaustion and held at bay by Phichit’s tight hold. His sobs slowed, and the tears that had soaked the front of Phichit’s robes flowed less freely. As he came to himself again, he looked up at the clock above the lecturer’s podium, and saw that it was now a few minutes past two o’clock.

Feeling him stir, Phichit released his arms from Yuuri’s shoulders, and let him sit up. Yuuri’s eyes were so tear-blurred and puffy that he could barely see Phichit, and he knew that he must look as terrible as he felt. Phichit peered at him for a moment, and then sighed, raising him wand.

“ _Celare,_ ” Phichit murmured, gesturing slightly towards Yuuri’s face. There was a strange, cool sensation on Yuuri’s cheeks, and he felt their puffiness begin to recede, and the swollen tightness in his throat disappear. The cool sensation, not unlike the touch of a fingertip, brushed against his eyelids, and he knew that his eyes would also have lost their redness, and his cheeks their tearstains. The charm, an obscure relic from an old medical textbook, had saved Yuuri from awkward questions many times at Hogwarts after he had spent a painful few minutes crying in the nearest bathroom before his final exams.

Yuuri coughed experimentally when the strange sensation had faded, found that his voice was largely back under his control, and then met Phichit’s eyes properly.

“What…” Yuuri began, his voice small and uncertain, before he trailed off into silence. Phichit met his eyes, and Yuuri knew he didn’t have to finish the thought; _what’s going to happen to us now?_

They stared hopelessly at each other, and then both silently turned to watch the second hand on the clock moving relentlessly in its path. It was now approaching quarter past the hour, meaning that they had forty-five minutes until their doom would be known.

The time passed agonisingly slowly. Without even the distraction of his misery, Yuuri was left with a deeply uncomfortable fluttering anxiety, which lodged itself in his stomach and seemed to grow worse with each revolution of the minute hand. Inchoate terror flitted through his thoughts, each time leaving a more painful image of what was about to happen; _would Sallowes immediately have them expelled? Would he decide to curse them for their lateness? Surely the school wouldn’t allow that; but what if they weren’t students anymore? Had Sallowes even ever taken the Healer’s Oath? He certainly seemed like the sort of person who would find ‘do no harm’ a challenge to his mode of living…_

Eventually, and thought it felt as though it would never arrive, there were only five minutes remaining before their meeting with Sallowes. Phichit turned to Yuuri with a hard and determined expression, and placed one hand down on top of Yuuri’s where it rested limply on the bench.

“Whatever happens, Yuuri,” he said, voice uncharacteristically serious, “We are going to get through it. We have each other, and we _will_ make a future for ourselves. I mean it. _Whatever_ happens now. We’ll be alright.”

Yuuri met his eyes, and saw complete and utter certainty burning in their depths; it gave him the courage to nod, set his face, and stand.

On legs which seemed more unwilling to carry them every moment they grew closer to their destination, Yuuri and Phichit made their way out of the lecture room and through the blessedly empty hall, their footsteps echoing dismally on the silent marble. They reached a tall, narrow dark wooden door, which had a tiny brass plaque on it reading in a sober font ‘ _Healer Sallowes, Anatomy’_.

Yuuri and Phichit stood for a moment outside the door, reading the plaque that twinkled so innocuously in the light of the late afternoon sun. They locked eyes for a moment, and nodded to each other, eyes wide. Yuuri lifted his unwilling fist to the door, and tapped once.

The response was immediate.

“Come in,” said the reedy voice of Sallowes, and the door swung open to reveal a small study, book lined, and dominated by an austere dark-wood desk. Yuuri and Phichit noticed none of this, as their attention was immediately claimed by the strange tableaux in front of them.

Sallowes sat on a hard, straight-backed wooden chair, his long thin arms crossed in a pose that clearly telegraphed his foul mood. Yuuri and Phichit had expected this; they had not, however, expected anyone else to be in the room to witness their demise. But standing either side of Sallowes, flanking him like bodyguards, were two robed healers. One was a man who was clearly past his fighting prime, his long hair in a ponytail behind his head liberally streaked with grey, but still so enormously tall and wide that he could have stood toe-to-toe with a Cerberus. The other was a stern-looking woman, her expression of steely reserve entirely at odds with her young face and dark hair; she looked as though she had seen a great deal of the world, and didn’t think much of it thus far.

Yuuri and Phichit stepped through the door, and it shut softly behind them with a _click_ that fell onto the still air like a single arrow fired between two armies positioned for battle.

Sallowes looked down his long nose at the two apprentice healers, and coughed his dry, unamused cough.

“Disgusting as I find your lateness, Katsuki, Chulanont-” he began in a voice which threatened obscure and undetectable poisons with every syllable, but he was cut off before he could finish the sentence.

“So, reprobates!” interrupted the enormous man to his left, spreading his arms wide in a gesture of comically resigned despair, his eyes twinkling deep in his weathered face. His voice was warm and rough, good-humour underlying his stern tone. Sallowes’ mouth was opening and closing, apparently so incensed at being thus deprived of the chance to harangue Phichit and Yuuri that he was rendered silent, but the rising colour in his cheeks indicated that this condition was unlikely to last for long.

The enormous man continued, folding his arms across his wide chest, “I hear that you were offensively late this morning! Such things cannot be allowed to lie, and so you’ve been sentenced….” He paused, apparently enjoying the drama, looking down at the ashen faces of the young men before him.

“Culpepper, your flair for the dramatic is intolerable,” snapped the stern young woman standing to Sallowes’ right. Her voice, even though it was peremptory in tone, was deep and musical; _it must_ , Yuuri thought in a dazed haze of terror, _have been a real effort for her to learn to sound so brusque_.

She looked down at Yuuri and Phichit, her dark eyes unreadable, and continued. “You will, in recompense for the time you have wasted and the poor attitude you have displayed, be spending your Saturdays from now until your final exams working in the wards at St Mungos. You,” she raised one finger and pointed it at Yuuri, who involuntarily stepped backwards, “Will be working with Healer Culpepper, who is so fond of dramatic pauses. You,” she continued, her finger swinging like a compass needle to point at Phichit, who stepped backwards just as Yuuri had, “Will be working with me, in whatever capacity I see fit. Report to us tomorrow evening at St Mungo’s at seven o’clock in the evening to discuss what we shall require of you. Do not be late again. You have been warned.”

She strode past the dark wooden desk, her deep blue robes sighing softly in the deadly still air of the office, and stalked out of the door behind Phichit and Yuuri. The enormous Healer Culpepper followed her, winking at Phichit and Yuuri’s frozen forms and smiling, before ducking out of the room, which felt a lot larger without him in it.

Yuuri and Phichit were left alone, with Healer Sallowes, who now looked so livid that the air seemed to be disappearing from the room, burning away on contact with his malevolent expression. There was a moment of silence, in which Sallowes drew in a hissing breath and opened his mouth to speak; before he could do so, Phichit and Yuuri murmured _Thank you, sir_ , in unison, and then turned tail and fled out of the office.

 

*************

 

Yuuri was never sure how they got home after that interview. Both of them shaking with pent up terror and dizzy with still unrealised relief, they were barely able to apparate in a straight line, and landed several feet away from where they were meant to, narrowly avoiding dropping directly into the muddy swirl of the river.

They staggered through the archway, ignoring the pleasant tingle of wards on their skin, and returned the cheery salutations of the shopkeepers they passed with only a weak smile and a barely raised hand. Neither of them spoke; neither of them thought, yet, about what had just happened, their minds barely able to process the confrontation.

The street seemed to fly by in an instant, reality blurred and unstable. When they reached their front door, the two of them crashed through it before it had finished opening; their progress up the stairs was marked with careless crashes of elbow against bannister and ankle against wall.

Yuuri and Phichit fell through their front door in a heap, landing in a tangle of limbs on their worn old rug in the incongruously bright and peaceful living room.

They slowly untangled themselves, blinking in the sunlight. Yuuri stood up, and Phichit met his eyes; they gazed at each other for a silent moment of wonder.

“We _aren’t_ …they _didn’t_ …” Yuuri whispered, his voice hushed and awestruck, not wanting to break the spell of their narrow escape with loud celebrations. Phichit nodded slowly, not breaking their eye contact; his dark eyes were wide, his mouth slightly open in disbelief at their good fortune.

Something moved at the corner of their eyes; both Yuuri and Phichit turned reflexively, to see that it was their portrait, still hanging over the mantelpiece, their smiles radiant and their St Mungo’s letters in their hands.

Suddenly, the reality of their situation rushed home to them both like a sudden draught of water to a parched throat. They turned to face each other again, smiles growing slowly on both their faces; Phichit broke first, a small snort escaping through his nose, and suddenly they were both howling hysterically, their laughter like a tower full of bells crashing to earth all at once, musical and endless and ringing.

“We _AREN’T_! They _DIDN’T_!” Phichit half laughed, half cried, hanging on to the door frame for support, his eyes full of tears and his face stretched by a smile so wide that he thought it might leave permanent wrinkles.

Yuuri fell backwards onto the overstuffed sofa, his shaking knees unable to support him anymore; he lay on his back staring at the ceiling, which had never looked so beautiful, and laughed until his ribs ached and his vision swam with unshed tears.

When the hysteria had abated slightly, Yuuri sat up, leaning on one elbow and peering at where Phichit now lay in an elegant pile of limbs against the doorjamb.

“I can’t…I can’t _believe_ it,” he said, his voice still awestruck. “How are we still students? What _happened_? Has this ever been done before?”

Phichit looked up, regaining some of his composure. “I don’t know; I honestly can’t for the life of me think of anything other than the fact that I don’t have to explain to my family why I am suddenly no longer studying medicine. They would _eviscerate_ me. Honestly. Mother’s told so many of her friends about her son the student healer…”

Yuuri smiled, the hysteria abating, his heart lighter than a feather and just as fragile after the stress of the day.

“Shall we order takeaway? I don’t think either of us have eaten since dinner yesterday, and I can’t think straight.”

Phichit raised a hand to Yuuri, who grasped it and hauled him up off to the floor to join Yuuri on the sofa.

“Yuuri, my dove,” he said seriously, his eyes still sparkling slightly, “You always know just what to say.”

 

**********

  
  
Later that night, once both Yuuri and Phichit had had a chance to shower and to eat, they discussed with a modicum more sense what had just happened to them. Phichit’s theory was that there had been some kind of divine intervention, and that Merlin himself had manifested to prevent Sallowes from expelling them. Yuuri’s theory, which he discovered later was far closer to the truth, was that the other Healers hadn’t wanted to dismiss two promising students on a first time offence, especially when it was the notoriously vinegary Sallowes proposing the punishment. Phichit promptly informed him that he lacked the true soul of a poet.

Regardless of the reason, the two of them were still weak with relief over their narrow escape. It took several hours before the reality of their new situation became more interesting to them than the fact of it.

They sat on their ancient sofa later that evening, with mugs of tea and a rug pulled over their knees, the window open to let in the autumn breeze and the starlight. The fire threw flickering, dancing light over their faces, and kept the darkness at bay.

“You know, I’ve heard of Culpepper,” Phichit said thoughtfully, blowing across the top of his tea to cool it and sending steam spiralling towards Yuuri.

Yuuri tilted his head questioningly. The name rang a bell in the back of his mind, too, though he couldn’t place it.

“He’s a specialist in unusual and dangerous magical beasts,” Phichit said, his expression pensive. “I read a book about his travels when we were sending in our applications to St Mungo’s. He’s been absolutely everywhere; all sorts of terrifying and remote places, where even one as talented and hardy as I would fear to tread.”

Yuuri rolled his eyes, smiling. He went to sip his tea, and as he did, a sudden memory struck him, and he lowered the cup before drinking. “Hold on…was that the biography you read about the man who discovered the Arctic Phoenix? The one who spent six months living on the ice just for one sighting? _That_ Culpepper?”

Phichit nodded, and Yuuri’s eyes widened. Augustus Culpepper, as he recalled now that he knew that the man they had met earlier that day was indeed _that_ Culpepper, was one of the most famous magical beasts specialists in the wizarding world; he had discovered most of the major new classifications of beast in the last fifty years. He was also meant to be notoriously hard to pin down, as he was always out in the field somewhere so remote that owls couldn’t find him and spells couldn’t reach him. What was he doing back in St Mungo’s, and why on earth had he agreed to let Yuuri help him? _What could I possibly help him with, anyway?_ Yuuri wondered, his mind racing.

Phichit’s expression became slightly more glum, and he spoke again, interrupting Yuuri’s train of thought. “I recognised the Healer I’ve been assigned to, as well. She’s Honoria Lovelace. One of the highest ranking Healers in the sell-damage ward; she’s found cures for some of the most unimaginably strange curses and hexes. I just hope she won’t be using me as a test-subject…”

Phichit trailed off, and both he and Yuuri stared into the fire, letting their minds encompass the fact that they were going to be working with two extremely famous, and therefore likely extremely demanding healers. As punishments went, they decided, they had been almost impossibly fortunate; they would have accepted any punishment which kept them at the school without complaint, and in comparison to what they might have been tasked with this felt like a grand prize.

 

When they finally hauled themselves to bed that evening, limbs heavy and exhausted by the emotional toll of the day, they were both thinking the same thought, though neither of them knew it.

 

_Tomorrow, we are buying an alarm clock._

 

***********

  
  
Augustus Culpepper sat up late in his study, rubbing the bridge of his thrice broken nose with his huge and weather beaten hands. The fire crackled merrily in the grate, and a mug of coffee steamed on his battered desk, but he felt no answering peace in his heart.

He hauled his body off the chair which had been magically strengthened to take his weight, and walked to the huge bay window the overlooked the London skyline. _Too many people,_ he thought grimly, looking at the lights of the muggle buses and the partygoers which spilled through the capital like so many dropped pins. He felt the longing to be back out in the field again rising within his heart; to be out on the isolated ice plateaus of the arctic, or the inhospitable mountains that he alone had ever walked upon in a hidden valley in Russia. Not here, with all these people, and these buildings which barely let the earth breathe.

He sighed, and turned back to his desk. He flicked through a stack of papers, found the room number he was looking for, and then left the room, wandering down a high ceilinged corridor to the room at the very end of it.

Pushing open the door, Culpepper stood framed in the doorway, stooping slightly to avoid cracking his head on the lintel.

The moonlight streaming in through the huge skylight had lit the room so brightly as to render a fire unnecessary; every detail of the man on the bed in front of him was picked out in clear silver light. Long hair spread across the pillow and spilled over the edge of the bed, and long-fingered pale hands were folded across the sleeper’s chest as though he were merely naturally asleep. His chest rose and fell in a regular rhythm. A pale face, with sharp cheekbones, bleached even paler by the moonlight; Culpepper guessed that the sleeper would have blue eyes, judging by the rest of his colouring, but he couldn’t be sure. He sighed again, quietly in deference to the sleeper, though he knew that even were he to scream the man wouldn’t wake.

_This_ , he thought. _This is worth more than following my wanderlust, this time._

Closing the door quietly behind him, Culpepper walked slowly back to his office, his mind turning on the problem of the sleeper like a half-dry water wheel.

_Who is he?_ Culpepper wondered, as he settled himself back in his wide chair, and picked up the steaming coffee in front of him.

He reached for a thick, stained leather volume, which scattered dried leaves and the odd feather across his desk as he pulled it towards him. Flicking to the index, Culpepper began to read, his many years worth of knowledge unfolding before him as he turned the worn pages covered in his own spidery handwriting.

 

And, just a corridor away, the sleeper breath disturbed the night air only barely in a steady rhythm, the moonlight trapped in his long hair and his hands.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back! I'm alive! I finally have wifi!!!  
> I'm sorry for the slow update; life stuff got very hectic and stressful over the last few weeks, and so I haven't had as much time to write as I would like. In theory, I will be back to regular updates from hereon out.  
> Thank you so much to anyone reading this for your patience, and I really hope you enjoyed this chapter; I know it's short, but I thought that a short chapter was better than no chapter at all. 
> 
> Please comment/leave kudos if you enjoyed <3


	4. Sleeping Beauty

Saturday morning arrived in a rain shower which swept across London indiscriminately, drenching muggle and wizard alike. The rooftops of Noke Street were left slick and shining, and the persistent dripping of overburdened guttering blended with the hubbub of early morning shoppers’ conversations, which echoed across the wet cobbles as enthusiastically as if it were a beautiful summer’s day.

In the ivy-clad quietness of Knyvett passage, Yuuri woke at nine o’clock to the extremely unusual sound of silence. His eyes blinked open in the semi-darkness of his bedroom, consciousness stealing up on him slowly; his first impression of the day was the slightly metallic dampness in the air that always followed rain, which permeated his sluggish senses before his brain could form any coherent thoughts.

Yuuri yawned, arching his back against the warmth of his bed, and slumped back down, rubbing a hand across his eyes. It took a few moments for his mind to adjust to this strange new phenomenon of waking up without the Morning Recital (Yuuri had, after the last incident in which he had fallen out of bed when Phichit hit a particularly melodious high note, given it the capital letters: not out of respect, but out of grudging recognition of a worthy adversary).

Yuuri flung his arm away from his face, and sat up, blinking.

He flailed a hand in the general direction of his bedside table, and managed to locate what felt like his glasses. Yuuri placed them lopsidedly on the end of his nose, and murmured ‘ _tempus’_ to his wand; a small silver thread of smoke shot of the end, and curled into the shape of a clock face. Yuuri read the time, and frowned.

_Nine o’clock, and Phichit still hadn’t woken him up? On a Saturday? But he never woke up later than-_

And in the space of a heartbeat, the previous day returned to him, and Yuuri felt a flood of remembered adrenaline surge through his veins. Heartbeat suddenly racing, and palms dampened with sweat, Yuuri recalled their frantic journey to the Medical School, their agonising wait in the lecture theatre, their impossible reprieve…

Yuuri jumped out of bed, the remembered fear still vivid in his bloodstream. His feet hit the cool wooden floor, and the slightly chilly air shocked his bed-warmed skin. He still couldn’t believe they had escaped; _was it real, or had he dreamed it? Was he really still a healer? What it…?_

Yuuri shook his head like a dog shaking off water, and tried to calm himself, taking deep breaths of the rain freshened air. It couldn’t have been a dream. His dreams were usually vaguely unsettling, or painfully mundane; he wouldn’t have invented something as horrifying as the moment that he had to knock on Sallowes’ door.

Yuuri shivered lightly, and reached for his dressing gown, the worn blue fabric comforting and familiar. Yuuri’s heartbeat was gradually slowing, but the unease that he might have imagined their reprieve was still squatting darkly in the back of his mind; tying his dressing gown tightly about his waist, Yuuri thought he ought to go and find Phichit, just to be entirely and completely sure that he hadn’t dreamed their miraculous escape. Feet padding quietly on the wooden floor, worn smooth by many years of use, Yuuri opened his bedroom door, and wandered out into the hallway.

He had fully intended to go and knock on Phichit’s door, both to reassure himself and also to make sure that he hadn’t entirely lost his voice overnight; but as Yuuri poked his face out of the comforting dark of his bedroom, the unmistakeable smell of pancakes drifted into his nostrils, and Yuuri felt himself drawn irresistibly towards its source.

Yuuri turned out of the hallway into the living room, and stopped, arrested by the sight in front of him. Their small dining room table was protesting under a plate full of pancakes, a slightly steaming teapot, and an unfeasibly enormous vase of sunflowers. The fire was lit and crackling lightly in the grate, casting a cheerful glow over the room.

Yuuri stood for a few moments, breathing in the wonderful smell of tea, mixed with the sweetness of the pancakes and the pepper-honey scent of the sunflowers. The rain was still pouring outside the bay window, and the rooftops outside glinted under a dull, slate-grey sky, but the sunflowers seemed to fill the room with a last glimpse of summer warmth.

Yuuri felt his heart lift, and he took a step closer to the table. A small sheet of parchment was resting on top of the worn tablecloth, with Yuuri’s name written on it in Phichit’s distinctive looping handwriting.

Yuuri picked up the parchment and unrolled it, to find a short note.

_Beloved,_

_Gone out to buy alarm clock. Thought you might like breakfast after yesterday’s ordeal._

_Eternally yours,_

_Phichit_

_P.S. It wasn’t a dream, Apprentice Healer Katsuki!_

Yuuri smiled, his heart suddenly warmer and lighter than air, and carefully rolled up the parchment again. He looked down at the sunflowers, their bright sunshine yellow somehow reminiscent of Phichit’s presence, and for the thousand thousandth time in his life, thanked every god that would listen for Phichit.

Yuuri sat down and poured the tea, his glasses fogging with jasmine-scented steam. The fear he had felt upon waking felt a million miles away now, dissipated as quickly as morning mist, though he still couldn’t believe how lucky they had been; how many students had survived Sallowes’ wrath?

Yuuri caught sight of his pile of textbooks out of the corner of his eye, and felt his light heart sink very slightly, his joy at their stay of execution losing a small percentage of its lustre as he considered the extremely lengthy reading list for the following week.

Pulling his anatomy textbook towards him, Yuuri picked up a fork, and began on the excellent pancakes, trying valiantly (and almost entirely successfully) to maintain his gratitude that he was still a student.

 

 

 

***********

 

  

Phichit arrived home an hour or so later to find Yuuri elbow deep in a pile of books, covered in pancake crumbs and having drunk the entire pot of tea. Laughing, he hauled Yuuri out from among the dusty pages, and the two of them began their usual Saturday morning cleaning routine. This included checking for any errant spell-work that might have begun interacting with their possessions (like the memorable occasion on which Phichit’s charmed mirror had a bad reaction to a cleaning jinx, and instead of telling the user whether or not his robes needed ironing began loudly proclaiming how hideous Phichit was and that he would never amount to anything; it took several hours and a few very pointed personal comments from the mirror before they fixed it), making sure that their cooking area was free of any potion spillages, and vanishing any dust or rubbish that had accrued over the week.

Phichit had been successful in his alarm-clock purchase. The two of them installed it in the hallway outside their bedrooms, and took turns recording a message to wake up to until they were satisfied; Phichit was all for recording his own virtuoso performance of ‘Morning Has Broken’, but Yuuri firmly vetoed this. They settled on the two of them yelling ‘Get out of bed!’ as loudly and passionately as they could, which took several tries to do without laughing; in the end, they gave up, and left their snorts of laughter in the message.

The day passed quickly, and before Yuuri knew what had happened to the time, he and Phichit were dressing in their apprentice healer’s robes and getting ready to apparate to St Mungo’s for their appointed punishments. They stood on their worn living room rug, examining each other for any errant threads or hairs out of place.

“I wonder what we’ll actually be doing?” mused Yuuri as he ran his wand over the hem of his robes, making sure that no dust was hiding there. “I mean…what use can we be, really? We haven’t even passed our final exams yet.”

Phichit twirled in his immaculate robes, attempting to see his own back without success. “You forget, dearest, that by our mere presence we shall elevate the entire operation of St Mungo’s into the realm of Art.”

Yuuri prodded him in the ribs as Phichit strained to see over his own shoulder, his expression unimpressed. Phichit turned back to face him, grinning.

“Alright, maybe not. We’ll probably be doing the things that they don’t want to do and that we can’t ruin entirely; paperwork, and basic cleaning spells and things. I expect that you’ll have a nicer time of it than me; Healer Lovelace is _profoundly_ terrifying.” Phichit took one last look at Yuuri, and nodded, satisfied that they were both as ready as they ever would be.

Yuuri glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece, which read 6.30pm. The light outside had dwindled to a deep blue dusk, though no stars were visible in the eternally bright London sky. He held out an arm to Phichit, his hand shaking very slightly with nerves, and asked, “Shall we?”

Phichit gripped Yuuri’s arm reassuringly, and Yuuri took a deep breath, willing his magic to take the two of them where he wanted to go. There was the usual brief blur of light and sound, and then the two of them were standing outside the dingy frontage of Purge & Dowes, with muggles in suits hurrying past them, apparently unconcerned with their sudden appearance.

Yuuri and Phichit shared one last look, and nodded to each other, trying to look as though they were entirely prepared to enter the hospital that they hadn’t thought they would be working at for another year at least.

Squaring their shoulders, they stepped through the sheet of glass that separated the muggle and magical worlds, and felt the brief cooling sensation of wards on their skin. Yuuri knew that these wards were unique, designed to remove infection on entrance and exit from the hospital, and they felt very different to the slight tingling buzz of the wards that protected Noke Street from notice.

 

 

When they emerged on the other side of the glass, the first thing that Yuuri and Phichit noticed was the noise. It was overwhelming, and seemed to be issuing largely from the waiting area to the left, where the walk-in emergency patients occupied a series of wide and comfortable looking chairs.

Yuuri blinked, trying not to stare at some of the waiting wizards and witches.

One man appeared to be wrestling with his own arm, which looked as though it was trying to strangle him; the woman next to him (who was ducking out of the way whenever the man lunged in her direction to avoid his own grasping fingers) had eyebrows which were so long and thick that she appeared to have a very impressive floor-length beard. Further along, Yuuri noticed a middle aged man with an enormous duck’s bill growing out of the centre of his face; his small son, evidently enormously entertained by the entire experience, was tugging on the bill and shouting “Quack, Daddy! Quack!”, making his father wince with every tug. _Animagus gone wrong_ , thought Yuuri, slightly dazedly.

Phichit tugged on his elbow, breaking him out of his ogling, and the two of them began to make their way over to the reception desk, dodging the occasional Healer who was hurrying across to the patients in the waiting area. Before they could quite reach the desk, however, Yuuri felt Phichit tense beside him; he turned around, but before he could ask what was wrong, Healer Lovelace had appeared out of thin air, and seized Phichit by the elbow.

“Good, you’re here,” she said, her voice brusque and efficient. “Come with me; we’ve got a lot to do, and I cannot abide idleness.”

Paying as little attention to Yuuri as though he were a flobberworm, Healer Lovelace dragged Phichit off in the direction of the stairs without a backward glance, Healers and patients alike scattering out of her way. Phichit managed one final, terrified moment of eye contact with Yuuri, before the doors closed behind them and he disappeared from view.

Yuuri stood stock still for a moment, staring at the closed doors which had eaten Phichit whole, and then turned slowly to face the reception desk.

A young witch with dark hair sat there, her apprentice robes immaculate, and her expression bored; she was absorbed in what looked like a medical textbook. Yuuri coughed tentatively, and she looked up with a start from the book she had been reading.

“H…” Yuuri tried to speak, found he couldn’t, and cleared his throat before trying again, his voice almost swallowed by the bedlam that continued issuing from the waiting area. “Hello, I’m Yuuri Katsuki? I’m here for…”

The girl didn’t give him a chance to finish, but reached under her desk for a ledger that was covered in tiny, spiked handwriting. She ran her wand down the margin, and evidently found what she was looking for, because she said in a reasonably pleasant, if mechanical way, “Yuuri Katsuki, to see Healer Culpepper. Please meet him in the research library.” Seeing Yuuri’s expression of polite terror, she sighed, and said “Top floor. Take the lifts to the left of the ward entrance, and you can’t miss it.”

Yuuri blinked at her once, opened his mouth to say thank you, and saw that the witch had already gone back to her book. His palms sweating, Yuuri turned, and saw the lifts through the bustling crowd of Healers and patients. He made his way over to them, only narrowly avoiding being trampled by a man who appeared to have turned his feet into dinner-plate sized hooves. Gaining the peace of the lift was a huge relief; Yuuri pressed the button for the top floor, and sighed gratefully as the doors slid shut, restoring peace.

The lift was wide and square, and panelled in gold, which had been polished so brightly that Yuuri could see his own terrified expression reflected back at him. It moved smoothly upwards, not stopping at any other floor; after a few moments it slowed and stopped, and a soothing female voice announced “ _Research Library: Healers and Apprentice Healers only_ ”.

Yuuri stepped out of the lift into a short, white stone corridor, with a small wooden door at the other end. There was no other direction in which to go, so Yuuri approached the door cautiously; the lift doors clanged shut behind him, and he heard it whooshing downwards again.

Yuuri’s heart was beating fast as he looked at the small, plain wooden door. Culpepper was behind it; Culpepper, under whose charge he would be for several months at the very least. Yuuri hoped that Culpepper was kind, he hoped that he wasn’t about to discover that he was to be the test subject in some perilous experiment, and above all, he hoped not to make a fool of himself in front of the world leader in his favourite subject.

His palms sweating, Yuuri reached for the small door, and pushed it open, ducking slightly to step through it.

He was confronted with one of the strangest rooms he had ever seen, including the more out-of-the-way dungeons at Hogwarts. Yuuri craned his neck upwards to get a proper view, his mouth falling open in awe.

The Research Library was dome-shaped and circular, the walls reaching seventy feet into the air above his head, and curving down at a gentle gradient until they reached the floor. Periodically scattered throughout the room, there were glowing fireplaces surrounded by low-slung armchairs, and wide desks piled with spare parchment and quills. The dome was pierced by several lofty windows, which let the blue dusk spill into the room.

But Yuuri noticed these things only slightly; what made his neck crane upwards and his mouth hang open were the _books_.

There were thousands, maybe even millions of them. They lined every inch of the wall that wasn’t taken up by windows or fireplaces, reaching upwards on polished wooden shelving which continued right up until the mid-point of the dome, the books right at the apex hanging at right angles to the floor, seventy feet below. Still more books hovered sporadically in the air, their pages rustling slightly as though in a light breeze, their covers flapping every now and then as though they were keeping themselves aloft.

Yuuri stood, thunderstruck. _How much knowledge is there in this room?_ he wondered, gazing around at the miles and miles of shelves, and the flocks of books which coasted above him.

Suddenly, one of the larger books (which had been peacefully hovering about thirty feet above his head in a dense flock of reference tomes) gave a slight shiver, and dove towards the ground with terrifying speed; Yuuri felt the wind of its passing ruffle his hair. It swooped down towards one of the larger armchairs, and silently skidded to a halt on the desk, where it lay quietly.

Yuuri followed its path, and when he looked towards the armchair to see who had called the book down, he met the piercing grey gaze of Augustus Culpepper.

Yuuri froze, having entirely forgotten that this man was the reason he had entered this remarkable library in the first place. Culpepper extended one enormous hand, and beckoned Yuuri towards him with one finger, his eyes glittering ominously over a disconcertingly wide smile.

Yuuri paused for a moment, not wanting to obey such an alarming invitation; but then he steeled himself, and padded across the carpeted floor, his footfalls making less noise than a breath.

Culpepper was, up close, quite the most enormous person that Yuuri had ever met. His frame was so long that his legs extended out of the other side of the desk in front of him, and he was so broad that his shoulders were crammed into the wide armchair uncomfortably. Culpepper looked up at Yuuri very seriously, placed a finger to his lips, and said “ _SHHHHH_!” in an absolutely deafening whisper.

Every single head in the library jerked upwards reflexively, and Yuuri saw many pointed glares directed towards them. Culpepper winked at him, unwedged his shoulders from the too-small armchair, and hauled himself to his feet.

Gathering up an armful of books, he motioned to Yuuri, who held his arms out just in time to catch them as Culpepper dropped them from a few feet above him. Culpepper gathered several more books under one arm, and then made a dismissive motion with one huge hand; the remainder of the books on the desk jerked to life, hovering for a moment before leaping into the air to re-join their companions.

Culpepper motioned to Yuuri to follow, and strode out of the library, making no effort to quieten his footsteps. Yuuri felt the enraged stares burning the back of his neck, following him out of the room as he hurried to follow Culpepper, trying not to drop any of the books he had been handed.

Culpepper stood waiting for him in the corridor outside the library, his huge frame making the short stretch between the door and the lift seem smaller than ever. Yuuri carefully shut the library door behind himself as he left, balancing the books on his arms and trying not to do anything which might make the glares of the library’s occupants any more vicious.

He had barely shut the door when the quiet was shattered by what sounded like a thunderclap. Yuuri jumped, and dropped all the books he had been carrying, reaching for his wand in a panic; after a moment, he looked up, and realised that the noise had been Culpepper laughing.

“So, reprobate!” he said in a deep rumble, a voice that was more felt in your chest than heard with your ears; he extended a hand towards Yuuri, who shook it in complete bafflement. “Here you are then! Good to shake up those library-lubbers every now and again; most of them haven’t set foot outside for at least ten years. Got to keep them on their toes. We’re going to my office for tea, alright?”

Yuuri nodded, still speechless, and Culpepper reached into his robes and withdrew a slim, mahogany coloured wand. He gestured at the wall with it, which groaned for a moment, and then formed a tall wooden door.

Culpepper turned round, and saw Yuuri staring. He smiled, his grey eyes warm. “Perks of the job; they get me to leave the field and stay still for more than a month, and I get a good office.” He looked down at the dropped books at Yuuri’s feet, gestured with his wand again, and they flew into the air in a neat queue. Culpepper pushed open the door that had appeared from nowhere, waved the books through, then entered himself, holding the door for Yuuri, who stepped through, his mouth slightly open.

The room in which he now found himself was a large, comfortable office. Its most striking feature was a huge bay window which overlooked the London skyline, glittering against the dark sky. The rest of the room contained a huge desk, and an even huger chair; and to the left of the door Yuuri had entered by, there were two old and well-worn sofas, which sat on an intricately woven dark green rug in front of a roaring fire.

Culpepper shut the door behind Yuuri, and gestured to one of the sofas. Yuuri sat, perching right on the edge of the cushion, too nervous to relax; Culpepper seemed like a force of nature, and Yuuri hadn’t yet decided whether he was safe from the storm or not.

“Tea?” Culpepper asked, and Yuuri nodded, his throat too dry to speak.

Culpepper flicked his wand, and a chipped mug of steaming tea appeared in Yuuri’s hands, forcing them apart from where they were clenched in his lap to make room for itself.

Culpepper crossed the room in a few strides, and settled himself on the sofa opposite to Yuuri, his long legs slung sideways to avoid knocking over a small occasional table. He surveyed Yuuri thoughtfully.

“You can stop looking so nervous; I don’t bite,” said Culpepper, his deep-set grey eyes twinkling. Yuuri smiled, and took a sip of tea; it was strong, and the warmth seemed to melt away a little of his fear.

“So, you’re a victim of young Sallowes’ wrath, eh?” Culpepper leaned forwards slightly, resting his elbows on his knees and peering at Yuuri interestedly.

Yuuri blushed, and said quietly, “I’m sure it was my fault. I mean, we were late, so…”

Culpepper interrupted him with an impressive snort. “Late? Good grief, the standards of behaviour have gone down since my time at the medical school.”   
Yuuri looked down at his hands, ashamed, but then looked back up in astonishment as Culpepper went on. “When I was in my second year, I turned up to an anatomy lecture still utterly sloshed from the night before, with a brand new tattoo of a dragon somewhere that I don’t doubt the lecturer wishes he could unsee, and a ‘never-before-seen’ creature in my pocket.”

Yuuri felt a faint smile creep over his face. Whatever Culpepper was planning, he clearly didn’t think Yuuri deserved evisceration for his lateness.

“…What was the creature?” Yuuri asked, intrigued.

Culpepper laughed his thunderclap laugh again, and Yuuri saw the tea in his mug shake slightly. “It was a starburst salamander; entire room went up in the most spectacular display I have ever seen before or since, red and purple sparks _everywhere_ …think I set fire to everyone’s lecture notes within about twelve seconds. It's alright, though, they put the lecturer out as soon as he stood still long enough to be hit by the water.” Culpepper laughed again, and leaned back into the sofa cushions with a reminiscent smile.

Now that Yuuri’s fear was diminishing, he took a real look at Culpepper. His long grey ponytail hung down over the back of the sofa, his lined face weather beaten and tanned; his long arms were slung carelessly across the cushion backs. _Once you look past the sheer size of the man, you begin to notice other things,_ Yuuri thought; like his easy smile, and the kindness in his eyes.

Yuuri smiled properly back at Culpepper for the first time, the apprehension of his fate ebbing away with every moment.

“That’s better; can’t have you thinking you’re a real miscreant, what with your paltry attempt at trouble making,” said Culpepper, grinning at Yuuri.

He leaned forwards, and adopted a slightly more business like tone. “Now. I don’t doubt you’ve been wondering what it is that we’re going to be doing here. Have you heard anything about me? My background, my speciality?”

Yuuri nodded. “Magical beasts; I read about your discovery of the artic phoenix.”

Culpepper smiled, looking slightly wistful. “Ah, yes…six months in the arctic, freezing my every appendage off, that was.” He sighed. “What I’m doing here, back in this infernally overbuilt city, is quite different, though not entirely dissimilar. I’m doing research on a very, very unusual case. And that,” Culpepper said, standing up quite suddenly and gesturing for Yuuri to do the same, “is what you will be helping me with. Research. Come with me; I can’t really explain until I’ve show you.”

Yuuri followed Culpepper back out of the office door, which now appeared to lead somewhere quite different; a long corridor, high-ceilinged, with a single door at the end of it. Culpepper pushed open the door, and stood back to allow Yuuri to enter, following him inside and shutting the door behind them.

Yuuri saw a hospital room, with a huge window dominating most of one wall. He saw a high skylight, which showed the deep blue sky overhead, the moon now risen and hanging, full and shining, in the clear air.

And, lying on a bed in the centre of the room, there was a figure.

Yuuri stepped closer, slightly warily. Culpepper, from behind him, rumbled “It’s alright to go closer; you couldn’t wake him if you tried. Tell me what you see.”

Yuuri approached the bed, looking intently at the figure that lay there, perfectly still other than for the small rise and fall of his chest.

Yuuri's breath caught slightly in his throat. The person on the bed was a man, quite young. His long air spilled across the pillow, and hung down over the edge of the bed; it was the colour of moonlight.

Culpepper waved his wand, watching Yuuri intently. A soft light suffused the room, seemingly coming from the walls, golden and gentle.

Yuuri looked at the young man’s face. It was pale, and slightly angular, with a sharply defined jaw and cheekbones; his eyes were shut, and his full lips slightly parted, the slight sigh of his breath barely audible.

Yuuri had never seen anyone so beautiful in all his life.

“Is he…” Yuuri asked, needing to know, needing to be sure that this perfect sleeping man was not in danger.

“Oh, he’s perfectly fine; completely healthy. He is twenty seven years old, has never smoked, and is in perfect physical condition. The only thing identifiably wrong with him at all, in fact, is that he has a genetic predisposition to male pattern baldness,” said Culpepper, his voice instinctively lowered in the presence of the sleeper.

“But then, why...?” Yuuri asked, not needing to finish the question. He looked at the man’s hands where they were folded across his chest, and thought that but for his light breathing the man could be a beautiful corpse, so still was he; the thought caused a small, inexplicable thorn of pain to dig into his heart.

“Come back to my office, and we’ll discuss it. This isn’t the place,” Culpepper said, gravely.

The two of them made their way back to the comfortable office, and seated themselves once again on the sofas.

“That man was found camping on the side of a Russian mountain, in the middle of nowhere, three months ago,” said Culpepper once he had settled himself. “He was exactly as you see him now; perfectly healthy, and asleep. Entirely asleep. As far as the Russian healers were concerned, nothing could wake him; no potion, no spell, nothing. He was condemned to live for as long as he is able to in his current condition. But then,” and Culpepper’s face grew suddenly weary, “They remembered me. I have a history of making breakthroughs with creature induced injuries that have never been seen before; get me to tell you the story of the starwort beetle one day.”

Yuuri frowned slightly, his brain whirring into action. “So, you think that the man could be…suffering from some kind of creature induced injury? Have you ever seen something like this before?”

Culpepper sighed heavily. “No, I haven’t. Neither has anyone else alive today. But, there are stories…I have theories….”

Culpepper paused, and leaned forwards again, resting his elbows on his knees and peering at Yuuri intently.

“Do you understand, now, why your helping me is a punishment? I’ve been told you have a particular flair for magical beasts; that you have great potential in this field.” Yuuri flushed slightly, embarrassed but delighted. Culpepper went on, “This is not something which I am sure we will solve. It will likely be months of research, scouring the most dry and obscure tomes of the library for something which may not exist. And even if we do find something, some cure or theory, there is no guarantee it will work. Do you understand? This may be a pointless and impossible project.”

Yuuri met his eyes, and thought of the beautiful sleeper who lay one short corridor away, peaceful and perfect and vulnerable. He thought of waking the stranger, of seeing what his eyes looked like beneath their closed lids….

Yuuri nodded, firmly, his mind made up. He would try and help this man, and he would try his hardest, even if it meant eventual failure. He could not doom anyone to sleep forever, not if there was a chance he could help, and that man was….

Culpepper saw the decisiveness in Yuuri’s eyes, and smiled. “Good. Now that you understand, I’ll tell you what I think, and what I’ve guessed. This may be a load of drivel; it may be the absolute truth. You can decide when you’ve done some more research.”

Culpepper leaned back on the sofa cushions again, his eyes distant, his voice falling into a cadence more musical and rhythmic, as though he knew this story by heart.

“There is a story,” he said, “Told by both muggles and magical folk alike. There are a few differences between the versions we tell, but largely, the two tales are the same. There was a beautiful princess, who was cursed, and fell into an enchanted sleep for a hundred years. Her true love fought his way to her through deadly enchantments, and woke her. The muggles say it was with a kiss, and the wizarding tale says it was with a spell; either way, she woke up.”

Yuuri frowned; something in the back of his mind was telling him that he knew this story, that he had heard it before…

“The muggle story ends there, the one they call ‘Sleeping Beauty’,” continued Culpepper in his bass rumble. “But the wizarding tale is slightly longer. It tells of how the princess spoke of another land, one that she had walked in for those hundred years, all in her mind; she spoke of friends, loved ones, that she had made there, and for the rest of her days she maintained that they were waiting for her, just the other side of sleep. Wizards called the story ‘The Dreaming Princess’. Have you heard it?”

Yuuri nodded slowly. “I think my parents must have told it to me when I was very young; I can hardly remember it now, though it does sound familiar. Do you think that whatever happened to that Princess has happened to this man?”

Culpepper smiled, eyes twinkling. “They told me you were a bright one. Yes, I think that the cases might be connected; what are fairy stories, after all, if not part of our history that needs to be retold? I think that the story might initially have been some kind of a warning, a cautionary tale…don’t stray off the path, don’t spill the salt, and maybe, don’t do whatever you’re doing or you’ll fall asleep like the Princess.”

Yuuri’s eyes widened slightly. “So, that would mean…that’s where we start our research?”

Culpepper nodded again, looking slightly disgruntled. “In theory, yes. In practice, it’s very difficult to find original copies of that sort of tale, and the later ones aren’t helpful; too much romance in them. But it’s a good place to start looking. So, my young miscreant, for a few days I am going to chase down some books which we can start with; if you have any ideas, owl me, and I’ll add them to the list. I don’t care how wild they might be. But for now, I would like you, please, for the first phase of your punishment,” Culpepper punctuated the word with a wink, “To spend the remaining hour of your time here tonight with the patient, casting all the diagnostic charms you know. Just in case. It’s always possible I missed something.”

Yuuri raised his eyebrows, and Culpepper graciously conceded, “All right, it’s unlikely, but still possible. I’m not infallible, you know. In terms of how things are going to work from now on; I’d like you to spend as much time as you’re able to in the research library, trying to find any references to a death-like sleep. If you ever want to see the patient, then ask me; I’ll need to have a key made for you to access his room, but it won’t be ready for a few weeks. I’m off for the night now, so when you’re finished just leave through this door; I’ve been here all day, and the indoor air is cramping my brain, or I would stay and see you out.”

Culpepper made as if to stand, but then paused, and stayed where he sat on the sofa.

“It goes without saying, Apprentice Healer Katsuki,” he said in a very serious tone, his eyes boring into Yuuri’s, “That a great deal of trust is being placed in you here. I have read your reports; I know that you are an exceptional student, and I also know that your teachers consider you kind, thoughtful, and mature.” Yuuri flushed bright red at the unexpected praise. “However,” continued Culpepper, “You haven’t yet made your healer’s oath. In this room, and in the patient’s room, I am prepared to treat you as though you have already sworn to do no harm. It is a great privilege, and a great burden, and if you prove yourself not worthy of my trust-” Culpepper paused for a moment, and the air around him seemed to darken imperceptibly, his face remote and cold and his usually warm eyes growing stormy.

Yuuri swallowed, his heart beating fast. “I understand,” he said quietly, in a tone just as solemn as Culpepper’s. “Thank you for the faith you are showing in me. I will try to prove worthy of it.”

Culpepper stood up, and suddenly the air was warm and full of the fire-glow again. His face was no longer distant, and he smiled as he reached out to shake Yuuri’s hand. “I know you will,” he said, and led Yuuri back down the corridor to the patient’s room.

Culpepper held the door open for Yuuri, who walked back into that still room with its still occupant. “See you next Saturday at the latest, Apprentice Healer; remember, owl me if you think of anything.”

Yuuri smiled, and held a hand up in farewell; Culpepper left, the door shutting softly behind him with a _click_.

Yuuri looked at the peaceful face of the sleeper on the bed in front of him.

_Well_ , he thought. _Time to get to work_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another update, as promised, not too long after the last one! 
> 
> This is a long one, I know- I really hope you enjoy the direction this story is going in. 
> 
> Just a few notes on how things are going to develop.
> 
> Firstly, this isn't going to be a fairy tale, or a straight copy of Sleeping Beauty or anything like that. I've always just been really fascinated with the relationship between myths and reality, and what causes superstitions, which is why I'm using a fairy tale as a starting point for Yuuri's research.
> 
> Secondly, Culpepper! I've based his looks on a sort of older and more rugged Celestino- think what Celestino would look like if he'd been living on the side of a mountain for most of his life, and then add a couple of feet in height and width. 
> 
> Thirdly, I promise that Victor is actually going to be active in this story, not just asleep and being beautiful the entire time. I won't tell you how just yet, but the next update will reveal all (well...most), and will hopefully be up pretty soon!
> 
> As always, thank you so much for reading- it means the world that anyone enjoys my ramblings.
> 
> Love to you all x


	5. Carpe Noctem

Yuuri blinked owlishly, the soft glow of the firelight glinting on his glasses. He raised his wand for what felt like the hundredth time, and drew a complicated shape in the air above the patient’s heart.

When Yuuri lowered his wand, a faint, smoke-like rune was left where he had drawn it into existence, hanging suspended and unmoving; an eerie mobile above the patient’s bed.

Yuuri peered intently at it for a few moments, waiting; when the rune remained a dull, smoky grey, he sighed. He leaned back, wincing slightly in the hard wooden chair, rolling his shoulders to try and relieve some of their tension. A small frown wrinkled his forehead.

Yuuri had been in the patient’s room for over an hour now, casting diagnostic charms, inscribing runes of healing in the air, and wracking his brains for the slightest scintilla of an idea about what might be causing this death-like sleep. As far as he could tell, Culpepper had been correct; the patient was entirely healthy, and in perfect physical condition; save for the tiny, insignificant fact that he couldn’t be woken.

As each rune stayed dull and lifeless, and each spell returned a negative, Yuuri had begun to understand what Culpepper meant about thankless research projects. Frustration bubbled quietly in the back of his mind, as he worked his way through the standard tests, and then moved on to the more specialised ones that he had only recently been taught. Still, nothing changed; the patient remained still, and silent, and cold, the spells unresponsive.

Sighing, Yuuri finished working the muscle knots out of his shoulders. The air felt oppressive; Yuuri found himself thinking longingly of his cheerful living room, and its perpetual state of mild chaos. _At least it’s lived in, rather than just existed in,_ he thought, stretching his shoulders one last time and gazing down at the silent occupant of the bed in front of him.

Yuuri sighed again, and looked out of the wide window. The moon was high; it was later than he’d realised.

_Time flies_ , Yuuri thought sardonically, _even if this isn’t exactly fun_.

Yuuri felt another sudden stab of pain in his shoulder, the muscles cramping from inactivity; he stretched his arms out in front of him, rolling his head back and forth. His hands fell back to the arms of the chair with a thud, the noise inappropriately loud in the quiet room.

Shivering slightly, Yuuri stood, and retrieved his green apprentice robes from where he had slung them over the back of his chair. He pulled them on, grateful for their familiar warmth. He was looking forward to the cheerful bustle of Noke Street, so far removed from this living mausoleum. He flicked his wand, and the fire went out, silver moonlight replacing its dim red glow.

Yuuri turned to walk to the door, but then paused before he reached it. He turned, looking back at the sleeping patient, where he lay on his unwrinkled and pristine hospital bed. He looked so peaceful, so perfect, but…

Yuuri took a few steps back towards the bed, and looked again at the marble-pale face of the sleeper, his silver hair spread like a fan around the pillow. It had been a long time since Yuuri had looked at the patient’s face; while he was undergoing test after test, he had become just a collection of muscles and veins and a steadily beating heart.

As he gazed now at the flat planes of the sleeper’s face, relaxed in sleep, Yuuri’s heart thudded dully in his chest; he felt the back of his throat burn slightly.

It was just so… _lonely_. This beautiful man, frozen into a living statue, no company but whatever dreams he walked in, no family looking for him, no one to mourn him if he never woke.

The thought hurt. Eyebrows furrowed in uncertainty, Yuuri reached out to where the sleeper’s pale hands lay folded across his chest. _How long has it been since anyone spoke to him? Touched him? Held his hand?_ Yuuri wondered.

The air was completely still, the man’s breathing regular and soft. The silence seemed expectant somehow, hushed to see what Yuuri would do next…waiting.

Yuuri’s fingers trembled slightly in the air for a moment, indecisive, and then he laid his hand across the sleeper’s.

Yuuri drew a deep breath in through his nose as their fingers touched. The sleeping man’s skin was cold, and smooth; he felt the warmth of his own hand being leeched away, warming the icy skin.

Yuuri curled his fingers around the man’s palm. He looked into the sleeper’s face, wondering if his small gesture of companionship had been noticed at all, but there was no change; the sleeper’s expression was serene, unmoving, his breathing the only thing that told Yuuri he was still alive.

Disappointment flooded Yuuri’s heart, unjustified but overwhelming. He removed his hand, and stuck it deep into his pockets, trying to reclaim some of his stolen warmth.

The silence seemed thicker now, unfriendly somehow, and Yuuri didn’t want to linger any longer. He walked quickly to the door and opened it, wanting more than anything to hear living voices, or to see the bustle of the pedestrians outside.

As Yuuri went to place his foot outside the room, he paused again. He turned in the doorway, looking back towards the sleeper, unchanged and unmoving.

The waiting silence filled his ears, almost deafening.

“I’ll come back,” Yuuri murmured into the still air, and then he turned on his heel and was gone, the door thudding softly shut behind him.

The moon shone silently down on Yuuri’s vacated chair, the room more lonely without his living presence to warm it. The sleeper’s quiet breathing was the only sound for a few long moments.

And then, almost inaudible, and echoing as though heard from a great distance, sounded a soft hiss.

It hung in the night air for a few seconds, and then faded.

And though Yuuri was not there to see it, the sleeping patient's hand twitched ever so slightly, where Yuuri's fingers had lain.

 

*********

  
  
When Yuuri arrived home, he had expected Phichit to be waiting for him, but the flat was empty and the fireplace untouched and cold. Yuuri murmured a charm, and it burst into life; he stood in front of it for a few minutes, warming his hands.

His thoughts continued the thread that they had followed all the way back home, running like waves over pebbles, back and forth without ceasing.

_I wonder who he is_. Yuuri stared unseeing into the dancing flames, their long flickering form reminding him of the silver hair that had spilled over the pillow, fluttering with the slightest movement of the air…

His thoughts eddied and swirled around him, unfocused, a series of impressions. Silver hair, a pale face, the moon, a silent bedroom…

Yuuri remembered the story that Culpepper had told him. The Dreaming Princess, he had called it. The mystery of the sleeping patient seemed just like a fairy-tale; a beautiful sleeper, cold and icy, abandoned by the centuries to sleep until the end of the world…

The fire warmed Yuuri’s outstretched hands, the warmth comforting after the cold hands of the sleeping patient. Yuuri pictured him, his pale face unmoving and perfect. He pictured him not on a hospital bed, but in an ancient castle, ruined walls and towers all covered in a blanket of choking vines. He saw the patient lying on a bed of roses, high up in a broken tower, the flowers winding through his hair, blooming against the silver like a splash of blood…

_But who will wake him_? Yuuri wondered, and for a brief moment pictured himself, armour-clad, riding into the ruined castle to save the sleeper. He could almost see himself, victorious, armour blood-stained and dented, waking the sleeper with a kiss…

The image was so incongruous that Yuuri snorted at his own ridiculousness, the sound breaking the flow of his consciousness. He felt the slightest scorch on the tips of his fingers, and dropped them from the flames, realising that he had been had been so lost in his thoughts that he was practically standing in the fireplace.

_And what ridiculous thoughts they are,_ mused Yuuri, equal parts amused and embarrassed. His stomach rumbled, and he jumped slightly at the mundane reminder that his life was no fairy tale; Yuuri was fairly sure that Prince Charming had never had to raid the kitchen after hours spent in unsuccessful medical tests.

Yuuri shook himself out of his abstraction, cheeks burning slightly. _Prince Katsuki_ , he thought to himself, and snorted again.

Shaking his head at his daydreams, Yuuri wandered into the kitchen in search of food.

 

******

 

It was several hours later than Phichit reappeared, in somewhat less than his usual style.

Yuuri had almost finished cooking when he staggered through the door. His robes were singed and smoking slightly, his usually immaculate hair stuck up in all directions available to it and a few previously unknown, and he had a dazed look in his eyes, as though he had been head-butted by a hippogriff.

Yuuri looked up from the stove as Phichit stumbled across the hearthrug and collapsed onto the sofa. He was blinking dazedly, the soot on his robes falling onto the worn living room rug and leaving deep black smudges.

Yuuri put the finishing touches to the stew, and wordlessly passed Phichit a bowl.

Phichit looked up at Yuuri, blinked a few times, and then said in a hollow, sepulchral voice, “I am not long for this world. Look well upon me, beloved Yuuri, for soon I shall be but a memory, a voice on the wind, a-”

“I shall mourn you eternally. But first, eat your stew before it gets cold,” said Yuuri, sitting down on the other sofa and surreptitiously casting a few cleaning charms on the rug.

Phichit peered into the bowl in front of him as though unsure what to do with it.

“Lovelace is a genuine fiend in human form. I think she might be a banshee. She foretells doom by her very presence, and she screeches in such a way that good men-” Phichit gestured vaguely to himself with his spoon, “are driven to madness.”

Yuuri tried valiantly not to smile, saying, “I’m sure you’re right. So the evening went well?”

Phichit laughed a defeated, only slightly hysterical laugh. “She had me working in Emergency Spell Damage. Some of the things those patients managed to do to themselves…”

Phichit paused, rubbing his face with one hand, smearing some more of the soot across his eyebrow. “She asked me about ten questions per second. And if I didn’t answer correctly within moments, she made me repeat the right answer back to her five times. These,” said Phichit, gesturing to the soot marks and still smoking patches of his robes, “Were caused by a toddler who had somehow managed to make herself breathe fire. I was trying to cheer her up, so I pulled some funny faces.”

Yuuri was confused for a moment, and frowned, opening his mouth to ask what Phichit meant, but Phichit forestalled him.

“I was successful. I definitely cheered her up. She laughed so hard that she nearly set the entire hospital on fire, and I only just managed to dive out of the way. Lovelace even cracked a smile when she saw me emerging from the ashes like the worlds most inept phoenix,” Phichit finished gloomily. He peered into his bowl of stew for a few more seconds, and then began to eat, utterly forlorn.

Yuuri walked over to the sofa and sat beside him, rubbing his shoulder and trying to avoid the worst of the soot. He adopted a very serious tone of voice, ruthlessly repressing the urge to laugh at the doleful image Phichit presented, and said “I’m sorry, that sounds awful.”

Phichit nodded sadly, and continued inhaling the stew as though afraid it might disappear. When he finished, he stood up and staggered in the direction of his bedroom, saying “If I live until the morrow, then I shall see you then. If not, you may have my favourite robes.”

Yuuri nodded solemnly in appreciation of the offer, and Phichit disappeared into his bedroom.

Yuuri waited until the door had shut behind him, and then finally allowed himself to smile. Melodramatic as Phichit was, Yuuri was sorry that he had ended up with such a tough assignment; he had been luckier than he realised being assigned Culpepper. Phichit, however, was as irrepressible as knotweed. Yuuri wouldn't be surprised if he was running the department within weeks.

Yuuri set the dishes to clean themselves, and then yawned, stretching out on the sofa and enjoying the warmth of the fire. It was late, and he knew that he should really get up and go to bed, but he was just so comfortable; his limbs were heavy, and walking to the bedroom seemed like an awful lot of effort.

His eyes shut for a few moments, the mists of sleep closing in around him against his will. Yuuri jerked awake after a few moments, his eyes flying open; he couldn’t fall asleep here, when his bedroom was only a few feet away. Mentally castigating himself for laziness, Yuuri hauled himself up off the sofa, and staggered across the hall to his bedroom.

He collapsed onto the bed, already more than half asleep. He had a hazy impression that he had dreamed when he drifted off for a few seconds, and the dreams tendrils lingered in his mind; not fully formed in the few seconds he had been under, a jumble of half-felt sensations. He had had a brief impression of sunlight, and _…blue?_

Yuuri yawned, his eyes closing involuntarily, tiredness heavy in his veins as he sank into soft blackness.

His last vaguely conscious thought was the hope that whatever the patient was dreaming of in his long, unending sleep, he was happy there.

Yuuri’s eyes slid shut again, and sleep claimed him.

 

*********  


The wind sighed gently, soughing in the distance.

Yuuri opened his eyes.

And shut them again, tightly.

Yuuri counted to three, very slowly and methodically, and then opened his eyes again.

He gulped.

The hallway was still there. High ceilinged and painted a pale blue, with polished wooden floors, and lined with bookcases. The afternoon sun slanted in through several open doors, lending the scene the unreality of autumnal sunlight.

Yuuri slowly looked down at his feet, which were bare against the smooth wooden floor, and then up at the ceiling, which was scattered with tiny, painted golden stars.

Yuuri stood absolutely still for a moment, his mind racing to catch up with his body. It took a second before it came to him.

_This is a dream,_ he thought, the realisation flooding his veins with relief. _I’m dreaming. I was exhausted, and I made it to my bed, and then I fell asleep, and now I'm dreaming that I'm...wherever this is_.

Yuuri pinched his arm experimentally, his fingers hampered by the robes he was apparently wearing. It hurt slightly, but the hallway remained where it was. Solid, quiet, and filled with soft light.

_Well,_ thought Yuuri, trying hard to maintain a logical grip on the situation, _this must be a lucid dream. Phichit tried to get me to learn how to do it once, and I never got it to work, but this sounds like what he was describing. So does that mean…?_

Yuuri closed his eyes again, and imagined a pair of shoes appearing in front of him. He held his breath as he opened his eyes.

No shoes.

Yuuri nodded slowly, the initial disorientation he had felt on finding himself in this strange hallway gradually ebbing away. Something about the slightly sleepy stillness, the distant sighing of the wind…it didn’t feel threatening.

Yuuri looked around him again, with more interest now that he was reasonably sure he wasn’t about to be attacked by one of his usual nightmares.

He reached out a hand to touch one of the powder blue walls. The plaster felt perfectly smooth beneath his fingertips, seemingly as solid as Yuuri.

Yuuri lingered where he stood for a few more seconds, looking around at the hallway. He felt suspended, trapped in amber, as though this whole experience was somehow unreal. And if this really was a dream, then…

With a sudden decisiveness, he stepped forward, making his way down the polished expanse of floorboards.

_If I’m stuck here until I wake up, may as well do some exploring._

Yuuri wandered down the hallway, pausing at several of the open doors. They opened onto a variety of rooms. A small sitting room, a room covered in maps, a room filled with shelves of potions…he peered briefly into each of the rooms and then moved on to the next. The rooms were all stylishly appointed, with high ceilings, and that same powder blue paint on the walls; they had a sense of age about them, the armchairs and paintings old and well worn, but clearly of the highest quality. _Like a stately home,_ thought Yuuri, as he ran his fingers over the soft leather of one of the books lining the walls. _Everything is ancient, but only because it was built to last._

The fourth door Yuuri came to was shut. Yuuri wondered briefly if it was rude to pry into closed rooms, remembered that this whole place was a figment of his imagination, and reached for the handle.

The door opened smoothly, revealing a room much larger than those he had seen thus far. It was painted white rather than blue, carpeted in deep red, and dominated by a huge bay window. Yuuri stepped forward, into the room, curiosity drawing him on; he padded across the floor, his feet making almost no noise on the thick carpet, stopping when he reached the window.

He felt his mouth fall open.

The view was breathtaking. An endless forest, extending as far as the horizon, punctuated by sheer mountains and swallowing whole the rolling hummocks of hills. The silver ribbon of a river pierced the trees, glinting in the sun, which hung fairly low in the sky.

Yuuri peered downwards, trying to see the building that he had found himself in. The bay window hampered his field of vision, but he could see pale stone walls extending in every direction; _I must have some pretty impressive delusions of grandeur, to dream up something on this scale just for myself,_ Yuuri thought dazedly, returning his gaze to the endless forest.

He stood, enraptured, loath to draw away from the landscape that rolled away before him like a living map. Eventually curiosity reasserted itself, and Yuuri pulled his eyes away from the window, making his way back into the corridor and continuing his exploration.

Yuuri wandered for what felt like hours, his bare feet miraculously not growing sore. He peered into what must have been hundreds of rooms; Yuuri lost count after two hundred and thirty. Some were huge and imposing, hung with tapestries; some were just large enough for a single chair and a window. The one hundred and fiftieth room Yuuri came to was a huge potions laboratory, where the alembics and cauldrons sparkled in the sunlight as though freshly cleaned.

The only constant was the silence. It sank into the plush carpets, and hung in swirling eddies about the high ceilings; it muffled every step Yuuri took, and lay in drifts where his footfalls briefly disturbed it. Where some houses sprouted cobwebs, this house grew quietness in its unused corners. 

Just when Yuuri thought he was beginning to lose his taste for exploration, he came abruptly to a wide staircase, which appeared suddenly ahead of him. Yuuri couldn't tell if it had been there all along, or if it had sprouted from the floor when it felt his approaching footsteps. It was made of what Yuuri thought might be cast iron, wrought into the shape of flowering roses; its tight spiral wound upwards and downwards, and when Yuuri peered down into where it pierced the floor, he could see the beginnings of countless more corridors like the one he stood in, presumably filled with countless more rooms.The sheer scale of the house was dizzying.

Yuuri stood for a moment, weighing his options. The silence settle again around his feet, glad that he seemed to have stopped fighting it. After a moment, he decided that going upwards felt friendlier, somehow, and stepped onto the staircase.

Immediately, the iron grew warm and soft under his feet, the texture of moss. The wrought bannisters shivered for a moment, and then burst into bloom, roses appearing under Yuuri’s hand where it rested on the rail.

Yuuri smiled. No matter how old he got, he never tired of the possibilities of magic. He began to walk upwards, his feet cushioned from the hard metal by the abundance of petals.

Yuuri climbed for a few minutes, his thighs beginning to burn. Before he could become too out of breath, however, the staircase began to become less steep, the spiral less tightly wound, the steps wider and shallower. Yuuri quickened his pace, his curiosity growing with every step.

By the time Yuuri reached the top of the staircase, he was panting, and nursing a mild stitch in his side. He bent double and rested his hands on his knees for a minute, waiting to catch his breath. When he managed to stop panting, Yuuri turned and peered back down at the stairs, watching as the carpet of flowers sank back into the iron as though it had never been.

Yuuri gazed around hi, wondering where the staircase had led him to. It was a wide, lofty hallway, far wider than the hallway on the floor below; it reminded Yuuri of a half-remembered muggle cathedral he had once been in with his mother, when he was very young. Candles floated in the air above his head, and wide, arched windows surrounded him on every side but one; the light had almost faded now, evening descending even as Yuuri watched. The air felt heavy, and smelled slightly of _…books…?_

Directly in front of Yuuri stood a door, nearly as high as the ceiling, its wood so highly polished that Yuuri could see his own wide-eyed face reflected back at him. Yuuri stretched out a hand to push the door open, and-

He froze, fingertips inches from the door's polished wood.

_He had heard something._

Yuuri stayed stock still where he stood, fingers still outstretched. He held his breath, the thrumming of his heart suddenly loud in his ears. Had he...?

Suddenly, there it was again.

Yuuri had heard it clearly this time. A faint, muffled cough had sounded from the room beyond the door.

Yuuri stayed where he was for another moment, mind whirring.

_This is my dream. I’m capable of dreaming a stately home so big I’ve been wandering around it for hours; of course I’m capable of dreaming another person. And if this is my dream, then they won’t hurt me._

Yuuri shuddered slightly, remembering some of his childhood nightmares. _Or if they do, then I’ll just wake up._

Emboldened by this thought, and determined to act before he lost his resolve, Yuuri reached forward and pushed open the enormous door. It swung forward soundlessly on well oiled hinges, revealing a cavernous room.

Yuuri had a brief impression of books. Thousands upon thousands of books, lining the shelves of the biggest library he had ever seen, lit by the last beams of the sun as it raced towards the horizon. He felt the sense of comfort that always surrounded him in libraries for a few moments. 

Then a pair of eyes met his own. Pale, ice blue eyes, with a strand of silver hair falling across them.

Yuuri felt his heart stop in his chest. It couldn't be. _It couldn't be._

The sleeping patient stood before him, just as beautiful as he had been when Yuuri had seen him a few hours ago. His shirt sleeves were rolled up and his hands were covered in ink, his wand wedged unceremoniously into his long silver hair. He was just as pale, just as flawless, but…awake.

Yuuri stared.

The stranger stared back, their eyes locked in mutual astonishment.

The silence stretched between them, becoming more solid with every passing second. Yuuri couldn’t seem to form a coherent thought, his brain supplying him with nothing more than an inarticulate buzz.

The patient blinked first, and moved away from the desk he had been working over, drawing his wand out of his long hair and pointing it at Yuuri, his hand steady and assured. With the wand removed, his hair cascaded down over his shoulders, and even in his numb shock, Yuuri felt his heart give a tiny leap.

The stranger spoke one short sentence; the words were unfamiliar, a foreign language. His voice was deep, authoritative; Yuuri blinked, and cleared his throat.

“I’m…I’m sorry, I don’t…” Yuuri trailed off into silence, unable to look away from the wary blue eyes that followed his every movement.

“Ah, English then,” said the patient, his accent curling the words slightly, his tone still challenging. “I said, who are you?”

Yuuri felt his heart stutter in his chest with what felt like fear, but without fear’s acrid aftertaste.

“I’m Yuuri,” he said. The stranger nodded, apparently satisfied, as though Yuuri had explained himself completely.

The rapidly fading sunlight threw a sudden shadow across the patient's face. He lowered his wand, and walked towards Yuuri with his hand outstretched.

Yuuri stood rooted to the spot. The stranger reached him, and held out his hand again. Yuuri shook it, marvelling at the warmth of his grasp- _but h_ _e should be cold, his hands were cold!_

The stranger caught his gaze again, and smiled suddenly, the expression lighting up his face in a way which made heat race into Yuuri’s cheeks.

“I’m Victor,” he said, and something in Yuuri's heart whispered _yes_.

And a split second later, before the vibrations of his voice had died away, the sun slipped over the horizon. There was a brief, sickening moment of light, and colour, almost like apparition; a confused blur of sound and sensation. Yuuri was falling, _falling_ ….

 

 

Yuuri sat up, gasping, sucking air into his lungs like a man half drowned. Sweat dripped down his back, pooling in the crevices of his elbows and soaking the neck of his pyjamas.

Yuuri desperately tried to slow his breathing, trying not to hyperventilate. _What…was that? What on earth was that? _

The dream seemed to hover in front of him in the darkness, not disappearing when he shut his eyes and scrubbed at them aggressively with his fists. The enormous house, with its silent lofty hallways and endless rooms, the staircase that bloomed beneath his feet, the library and…

_Victor_.

Yuuri pressed the heels of his hands hard against his closed eyelids, making tiny anemones of colour burst into life, dispelling the image of wide blue eyes locked on his own.

He felt shaken, winded, as though he had run a marathon. _That was a dream,_ he told himself firmly. _A very realistic, unusual dream. Victor was just…imaginary. I dreamed of him because I saw him so much during the day. That is the only possible logical explanation._

Yuuri lay back down, his heart beat finally slowing, and dragged the covers up to warm his sweat-chilled skin. He wondered, briefly, whether this was the sort of thing that Culpepper ought to know; it had happened, after all, following an evening spent in the patient's room, and it had felt so _real_...and Culpepper had said to tell him anything, no matter how stupid...

But the idea of repeating such a ridiculous dream to such an eminent personage killed the idea before Yuuri even fully considered it, a wave of embarrassment engulfing him at the very thought. Culpepper would probably laugh so hard at him that he simply withered away from shame, never to be seen again. 

And besides, just a tiny part of Yuuri's heart didn't want to share what he had seen for entirely more irrational reasons. It had seemed...too private, somehow.

Yuuri lay in bed, awake and shivering slightly in the morning chill, until Phichit began his morning recital.

_Just a dream_ , he told himself when it was finally time to get up, _just a dream._

_It was just a dream._

And as Yuuri brushed his teeth, showered and dressed, a tiny, treacherous part of his mind wondered whether he might visit Victor again that night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I LIVE!!!
> 
> I'm so sorry that updates with this fic (and Aperture if anyone is reading that) have been slower than I planned; I have exams, and life stuff, and generally have been pretty snowed under these last few weeks. I'm probably going to be snowed under for a little while longer, but in the meantime, have this chapter; I hope it's interesting enough to make up for at least some of the long wait!
> 
> Please do let me know what you think of the direction I'm taking this- I think this might end up being a little bit longer than I planned, but I'm currently working on this finishing up at about twelve to fifteen chapters. 
> 
> Thank you so much (as always) for reading, and love to you all x


	6. Roses

Yuuri was distracted.

Sunday in Knyvett Passage was traditionally a day of rest, in which Yuuri and Phichit allowed themselves the bliss of brief forgetfulness; they would pretend that their workload, Sallowes, the entire edifice of St Mungo’s, disappeared for twenty four hours. They found it necessary to maintain their sanity, though Yuuri had often expressed his doubt that they were sane in the first place, having signed up for this career path.

But on this particular Sunday, there was no leisurely brunch nor the comforting illusion that their coursework belonged to someone else. The pile of undone work had reached truly upsetting proportions, and so Yuuri and Phichit found themselves obliged to break with tradition.

Over breakfast, they had come up with a plan of attack, treating the pile of work as though it were a worthy adversary. Yuuri would tackle the Magical Beasts work, and Phichit would do his best with Anatomy. They would both make notes, and teach each other the material.

“Half the reading, double the efficiency,” Phichit had confidently stated, sipping his tea with an inordinate amount of smugness, considering they had yet to even begin tackling their assignments. “In theory, at least, we shall be done in half the time.” Phichit set his tea down and smiled beatifically at Yuuri. “Really, my dove, you are quite the most fortunate man alive, to receive as your teaching aid the distillations of my own fair mind.”

Yuuri flicked a grape at him.

The warm glow of optimism had faded somewhat when they saw the enormous list of required reading. Sallowes, never one to stint on taking up other people’s leisure time, had clearly decided that sleep and social activities were frivolous pursuits, unnecessary for the young apprentice healers, which ought to be put off in favour of reading anatomy treatises. Magical Beasts was hardly better; Killigrew had followed through with his threat of a test, and they had to review everything they had learned that term, which covered at least half of the syllabus.

Phichit groaned, unable to find the words which would adequately express his deep disgust.

With breakfast finished, so were their excuses. They reluctantly piled their textbooks on their rickety kitchen table, set the coffee pot to brew, and dove in to the ink-stained tomes, resigned to their fate.

Late-September rain lashed against the windowpanes as they worked, and the fire crackled in defiance of the chill air. The day was unseasonably dark, with banks of thunderhead clouds looming above Noke Street; even the usual chatter of the patrons and loud calls of the street merchants couldn’t be heard over the pounding rain.

The atmosphere in the flat was peacefully studious, and the occasional scratching of a quill was the only distraction, but still Yuuri found himself unable to focus as he usually could. The words swam and blurred in front of him, his lack of sleep from the night before making itself known; but that was not the reason that he found his mind wandering.

Every time he tried to force his mind to take in the words on the page in front of him, he found his mind drifting back to the enormous castle. He could still almost feel the bare wood beneath his feet, hear the distant sighing of that endless forest…and most clearly of all, see the blue eyes of the sleeping patient. _Victor_.

Yuuri turned a page, despite having read nothing at all on the page before it. _Was it really just a dream?_ The question echoed ceaselessly across his tired thoughts, reverberating dully and without answer, like a shout in a moss-covered cave. _Victor, Victor…._

Yuuri suddenly became aware that Phichit was waving a hand under his nose, his mouth moving. With an effort, he dragged his thoughts back to the present, and looked up inquiringly.

“As I was _saying_ , beloved, although you no doubt heard me the first time,” said Phichit with a slight smile, “You don’t look your usual sparkling self this morning. Even the coffee has not removed your usual radiant morning scowl.”

Phichit leaned slightly closer across the book he had open on the table, studying Yuuri’s face, his slight smile being replaced by a look of concern. “Are you alright, Yuuri? You really do look tired.”

Yuuri smiled wanly, and tried to cajole his sluggish brain into a better working order. “I’m fine- I just had a bad night of sleep. Bad dreams, you know.”

Phichit’s frown deepened, and his hand twitched towards Yuuri’s where it lay on the tabletop. “Oh, Yuuri, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean...were they…?”

Yuuri shook his head emphatically. “No, nothing like they used to be; just run of the mill bad dreams. I’m fine.” He smiled, and poured more coffee into his mug, drinking it quickly enough to scald his tongue, willing the caffeine to kick-start his brain.

He turned his eyes resolutely back to the book, and this time made a real effort to take in the words on the page, forcing himself to understand; as he grew more absorbed in the chapter about the mating and nesting habits of the Occamy, the dream receded, evaporating slowly from the forefront of his mind like a persistent morning mist.

Phichit sat back in his chair, still studying Yuuri’s face in the firelight. He could see that Yuuri was reading properly now, not just staring blankly at the book and periodically turning pages as he had been; but something still seemed slightly off to Phichit.

He knew Yuuri’s face as well as his own, and he knew Yuuri’s tendency to keep all his troubles hugged tightly to his chest, where they would hurt only himself; Yuuri had never quite understood that the tighter he clutched his pain, the sharper it became, and the deeper it cut. Phichit had spent many sleepless nights trying to puzzle out the mazes that Yuuri trapped himself in, and he wondered if, yet again, Yuuri was just trying not to worry him.

As he sat at their kitchen table now, with Yuuri so intent on his book just a few feet away, the years seemed to fade. As Phichit studied Yuuri’s adult face, he remembered the tear-stained round face of the eleven year old that had wedged himself into Phichit’s heart the moment he met him.

If his nightmares had returned…

 

*********

 

Phichit would never forget the first time he had been woken up by Yuuri’s soft sobbing, a few days into their first year. The sound was only partially muffled by the royal blue curtains of his four poster, which stood so close to Phichit’s own.

The darkness of Ravenclaw tower had always seemed to magnify any noises, as though the darkness wanted to share the secrets people revealed under its comforting cover. It had taken a few moments for Phichit to be sure of what he was hearing, but Phichit had grown up with three brothers and two sisters, and he knew the sounds of a nightmare when he heard one; as such, when he had heard a stifled sob, he had promptly opened the curtains around Yuuri’s bed, and wriggled under the covers with him, holding him tightly until he had stopped crying as he had done for his siblings countless times. Yuuri had sobbed quietly into the shoulder of his pyjamas for what seemed like hours, but then he had quieted, and the two of them had fallen asleep in a tangle of limbs and tear-soaked blue blankets.

Phichit did not ask him what the dream had been about, and Yuuri did not tell him. But from that night onwards, they had become inseparable.

Yuuri’s heart-rending sobs shattered the nightly silence frequently throughout their first year, usually several times a month. Phichit noticed it was always worse when Yuuri was stressed; around exams, or when he had just returned from home after the holidays. Phichit knew that Yuuri would never ask, but he also knew that Yuuri’s night-terrors were less violent after he wriggled under the covers with him, his arms a shield against whatever phantoms haunted his friend’s dreams.

This pattern continued on into their second year, growing less and less frequent with time; by the time Yuuri and Phichit were sharing a fourth-year dorm, it had almost ceased completely. Phichit had never asked for an explanation; by now, he knew Yuuri as well as his own soul, and he knew that some things were not to be discussed. He trusted that Yuuri would, one day, tell him what terrors haunted the dark hours before dawn.

One day, Yuuri had. It was in their seventh year, and it had been about three years since the last time he had woken Phichit up with a night-terror; they were older now, and there was far less room for Phichit to dive into Yuuri’s bed, long-limbed and broad shouldered as he now was. It was a few months before their finals, and Yuuri had woken up shaking and sobbing, his heartbeat racing, the blackness of the night suffocating and thick. He had been about to cast a silencing charm, not wanting to wake Phichit, but before he could lift his wand, Phichit was there; warm, sleepy, insistent. He lifted Yuuri’s arm, and levered himself onto his bed, holding Yuuri tightly as his wracking sobs continued.

It was pitch black in their dormitory, the night shut out by thick curtains, and the air was dense with Yuuri’s harsh breathing. It took several minutes for him to get his breath back under control; Phichit did not let go, his slightly shorter build (always a sore point) allowing him to wedge his head comfortably under Yuuri’s chin.

“I’m…sorry,” Yuuri finally said, his chest no longer heaving. “It’s….I can’t…”

Phichit said nothing. He loosened his grip slightly, allowing Yuuri to turn and face him on the pillow, as though they were still eleven years old. There was far less space on the pillow than there used to be; Phichit could feel Yuuri’s breath on his face from a few inches away in the dark, though he could see nothing in the pitch blackness.

“I’ve never…” Yuuri’s voice was low and slightly muffled against the pillow, the stress of the nightmare roughening his voice. “I’ve never told you...I owe you an explanation.”

Phichit huffed at this proclamation. “You owe me no such thing, Yuuri Katsuki,” he said firmly, low and certain in the darkness.

“No, I do,” replied Yuuri, his words losing something of their shakiness. “You’ve been dealing with these nightmares as well as I have, for years. Since we barely knew each other. If I can’t tell you…”

Yuuri took a deep, shaky breath, and steeled himself. “It’s ridiculous, really. You’ll laugh. It’s so childish.”

Phichit reached a hand out in the darkness, groping on the pillow, and found Yuuri’s. He gripped it tightly, and said nothing.

“It’s just…ever since I was young, I’ve had these dreams. Nightmares, really. They sort of…they’re always the same, but a bit different, and every time feels like the first time, but I know what’s going to happen. I…”

Yuuri paused, unsure how to continue. The darkness seemed inviting, somehow, the unjudgemental pitch-blackness allowing him to share the poison that had dripped into his heart through so many nights. “It’s…I dream about my family. Mum, Dad, Mari. And you. And Guang Hong, and the others, sometimes, but mostly it’s my family, and you. And I’m at home, and they’re sitting across the table from me, and they tell me that…that I have to leave. That I’ve failed all my exams, and that I shouldn’t try to be a wizard, or a Healer, because I’ll never make it, and that they’re so disappointed in me that they would rather I never saw them again. That they never loved me anyway. Then they hold the door open and…and….” Yuuri stopped, taking another shaky breath.

Phichit felt as though something too large, and very painful, had lodged itself in his heart. He held Yuuri’s hand tighter in his, and thought for a moment in the stillness. He knew that he would never get another chance at this conversation, and it felt like a landmark, somehow.

The dark night air waited for him to speak, expectant.

“Yuuri…” he began, and then paused for a moment longer, trying to find the words to convey what he knew as an unarticulated certainty in his bones. “I know you. I know how driven you are, how hard-working, how talented. And you’ve achieved so much. Look at your grades! But…” Phichit paused again, sitting up slightly and leaning on his elbow. “You could have failed out of Hogwarts in your first year, and taken up with the most disreputable crowd you could find, and become a professional thief, and I would still love you.” Phichit heard Yuuri’s slight intake of breath in the darkness, and continued, his conviction lying heavily against every syllable. “You could defraud grandmothers for a living, and your family would still love you. If you didn’t have an ounce of magic, and your greatest ambition in life was to assassinate the Minister for Magic, we would _all_ still love you. Because you are _you_ , Yuuri Katsuki. And that means, by definition, that you are loved.”

Phichit lay back down, wedging himself back under Yuuri’s chin. Yuuri was completely still for a moment, then wrapped his arms around Phichit, and Phichit felt a few stray tears trickle down Yuuri’s chin onto his forehead. That night had been the last time Yuuri had had a nightmare.

At least, the last time that Phichit knew of…

 

**********  


Phichit came to himself, dragged out of the memory by a persistent _tap-tap-tap_ sound. He blinked, the living room in Knyvett Passage reasserting itself as the present day, that long ago dark night receding, its warmth lingering in Phichit’s heart even as the memory faded.

_Tap-tap-tap._

Phichit glanced up at Yuuri, who was so absorbed in his book by now that he hadn’t heard it. Looking around, he identified the source of the noise to be a sopping wet and furious looking tawny owl, which was clinging to their window sill for dear life, its wings buffeted this was and that by the pounding rain.

Phichit stood, and hurried to the window, the scraping of his chair shaking Yuuri out of his academic trance.

Phichit threw open the window, admitting both the owl and a splattering of rain drops. The owl landed on his arm, gripping him slightly harder than seemed strictly necessary, talons digging into his skin. Two fierce yellow eyes focussed on Phichit, and the owl let out a peremptory screech, sounding utterly disgusted with both the weather and Phichit’s delay. It dug its talons in for a moment longer, and then took off again, dropping a thoroughly sodden package onto the table before landing on the back of a chair in a flurry of water droplets. Phichit went to stroke the owl’s feathers as a peace offering, but it nipped him hard on the thumb, and soared straight back out of the open window into the storm.

Phichit massaged his abused thumb. “I hope that bird gets struck by lightning,” he muttered.

Yuuri picked up the parcel, and cast a drying charm on it before it could ruin his notes. “It’s for me!” he said in surprise, barely able to make out the spiky handwriting on the brown paper wrapping where the rain had smudged it.

Yuuri tore open the parcel, and a book fell out, landing open on the table; a note fluttered out of it. Yuuri picked it up, and read aloud:

“ _Dear Y-_

_Thought you ought to read this! Pop in to the ward tomorrow if you get a chance._

_See you soon- C.”_

Phichit, meanwhile, had picked up the book and was flicking through the pages. “Yuuri; why does your punishment apparently necessitate reading a book of children’s stories…? Not that I would question the august and mighty whims of Culpepper Himself, but…”

Yuuri blinked in surprise. “Didn’t I tell you what happened with Culpepper?”

Phichit shook his head, looking sorrowful. “This reticence wounds me, true companion of my heart. There was a time when nothing stood between us, when no secret marred the purity of our bond, when-“

Phichit was abruptly cut off when Yuuri flicked the note at his nose, scoring a direct hit. He spluttered indignantly.

Yuuri grinned, and stood up, stretching his arms out as high as he could, feeling the tension twanging between his shoulder blades. “What say we take a break for lunch, and I fill you in? It’s all a bit hard to explain.”

Phichit made a noise of assent, and the two of them wandered to the kitchen in search of food.

 

***********

  
  
Some time later, when lunch had been cleared away, Yuuri reached the end of his tale. He and Phichit were now seated on their ancient sofa, warming themselves in the wash of heat from the fire, mugs of tea clasped between their hands.

Phichit frowned, his tanned and flawless skin puckering between his eyebrows, dark eyes thoughtful. “It all sounds so…odd. And you say Culpepper doesn’t have any leads apart from this fairy tale?”

Yuuri nodded, his glassing slipping down his nose slightly, and sipped his tea. “I think I might try and read it this afternoon. Last night, I had…”

Phichit arched one elegant eyebrow when Yuuri’s voice trailed off into silence. “Yes? Last night you had..?”

Yuuri shook his head, smiling slightly. “It’s nothing. Don’t mind my rambling. Want to read the story with me?”

Phichit leapt up, returning moments later with the book, and struck a dramatic pose, as of a herald with particularly portentous news. “You ask the right question, my beloved, for I am well-versed in every fairy tale that ever existed. My sisters were particularly fond of The Dreaming Princess, and my dramatic readings of it no doubt changed their young lives forever. Such is my gift.” He bowed, sweeping one arm out with a flourish, and sent his mug of tea flying.

Yuuri collapsed on the sofa in laughter. Phichit looked highly affronted at his own clumsiness for a moment, and then smiled, vanishing the tea stain, relieved that Yuuri seemed to have shaken off whatever had been bothering him.

He picked up the book, stood in front of the fire, and began.

 

***********

  
  
When he finally made it into the dark peace of his bedroom that night, Yuuri had almost forgotten the dream. The mansion and its occupant had receded throughout the day, becoming less and less substantial with every passing hour, until eventually they had faded entirely from his mind. Phichit’s dramatic performances of first The Dreaming Princess, and then The House Elf’s Mistake and _then_ The Barely-There Tree, had kept them both in stitches for several hours; the afternoon had been warm, and suffused with happiness, as time always was when spent with Phichit.

Even the looming prospect of a week of anatomy lectures, the presence of Sallowes in said lectures, and an early start the next day had not been enough to quash Phichit’s good humour. Yuuri had been less sanguine; and now he had extra work on top of the mountain that already loomed, in the form of a visit to the hospital to see Culpepper. Not that he minded; he was fascinated by the research project, and Culpepper himself was so good humoured that it would be no doubt be interesting seeing him.

_And maybe I’ll see the patient again…_

As the bedroom door clicked closed behind him, and Yuuri heard Phichit’s door shutting down the hall, the sense of anticipation that he had been trying so hard to suppress welled up in his heart again with more insistence than before, bursting through the walls he had hastily thrown up to contain it.

What would he see when he fell asleep that night?

Yuuri took a deep breath, leaning against the worn wood of his bedroom door, feeling the slight chill of the wood through his robes.

_I’m being ridiculous. This is insane. It was a dream, and dreams don’t wait for you to come back to them._

_Even if I wanted it to, which I don’t, because that would be equally insane and ridiculous._

Yuuri shrugged off his robes, and hung them on the back of his door. He methodically pulled on his pyjamas, took off his glasses, and blew out his candle, trying to find calm in the routine actions, trying to still the thrumming of his accelerated pulse. He jumped onto his bed, pulled the duvet snugly around himself, and closed his eyes.

And a few minutes later, opened them again with a muffled curse.

Yuuri lay in the darkness, tension coiled thickly in his mind. _I’m being stupid. I have an anatomy lecture tomorrow morning, and I have exactly eight hours in which to sleep, and therefore I should be sleeping._

_So, why can’t I bloody sleep?_

Yuuri sighed in frustration, resisting the urge to curse something. He didn't want to use a sleeping potion; they tended to knock him out for at least twelve hours.

He got out of bed, wincing at the cold air, and walked across to the small pile of library books he kept on his desk. He didn’t often have time for extra curricular reading, but he had found some particularly ancient and neglected volumes of obscure magical beasts in the very back of the Medical School library, and he had taken them out more out of a sense of pity than academic inquiry; they had looked so forlorn, unread and unnoticed.

Yuuri ran his finger down the spine of a particularly dilapidated volume. _If this won’t send me to sleep, nothing will._

Yuuri took the book, and jumped back into bed, wrapping the covers around himself and leaning against the headboard. Murmuring “ _Lumos_ ,” he wedged his wand behind his ear, the beam of light focussed on the book in front of him.

Yuuri flicked through the musty pages. It seemed that the book was an encyclopaedia of strange beasts, some of which he had never seen before; the illustrations of the beasts were odd, not moving when Yuuri looked at them, but seeming to watch him warily as he read about them. It was interesting, but the text was tiny and cramped, and Yuuri felt the effort of deciphering it dragging him down deeper into exhaustion with every paragraph.

Yuuri slowly turned the pages, feeling his eyelids growing heavier and heavier. The wand light was dim and soothing, and the distant patter of raindrops was lulling him into a stupor. Just one more entry…

Yuuri yawned widely, and turned the page.

Unusually, there was no illustration. The title was cramped, awkwardly typeset, and Yuuri had to squint through half-shut eyes to make it out.

‘ _Dream dweller’_ , it read. Yuuri yawned again, and his wand slipped out from behind his ear as he slid down the pillows, mouth open slightly, eyes shut.

The book fell to the floor as his nerveless hand allowed it to slip quietly through his fingers, his page lost as the leaves of the book fanned shut.

 

He dreamed.

*************  


 

_Leather. Beeswax. Dust._

Yuuri breathed in deeply, the rich scents painting themselves across his senses in a watercolour of golds and browns. He was sitting in some kind of chair; the leather felt smooth beneath his fingertips, worn and supple.

Light filtered pinkly through his closed eyelids, the delicate pattern of veins mapping itself across his field of vision. He was dimly aware of a soft sound in the distance, which might have been trees sighing in the wind, or a far-off waterfall, or maybe a storm gathering many miles away. Everything was still. Everything was peaceful.

Yuuri sighed in contentment, and opened his eyes.

“Hello.”

Yuuri let out a yelp, shattering the peaceful moment like a hammer thrown at a pane of glass. As the shards of the silence rained down around him, Yuuri found himself looking directly into an already familiar pair of ice-blue eyes, which were peering at him from about two feet away.

_Victor_.

Yuuri gasped, and tried to leap out of the armchair, away from Victor’s unexpected proximity. He got about half an inch before he realised that he had been very thoroughly bound to the chair, with what looked like silk scarves; he thrashed for a few moments, panic rising in his chest in an acid flood, the need for freedom choking through his lungs in a frantic tide.

“It’s alright,” said a deep and musical voice, cutting through his panic, “I’m not going to hurt you. I just needed to be sure of what you were.”

Yuuri looked up at Victor, the panic receding slightly at Victor's non-threatening tone. “What I…am?”

Victor nodded, his expression serious. “You can’t be someone wishing to harm me, or the wards would never let you through. You can’t be a dementor, or a boggart, or a hag for the same reason. Hold still for a few seconds.”

Victor raised his wand above Yuuri’s head, and then levelled it directly at his nose. Yuuri went cross-eyed trying to keep the tip of it in view.

“Wait a minute!” he yelped, as he saw Victor opening his mouth to cast a spell. “I’m human! I’m a wizard! I’m-”

“ _Ostende_ ,” murmured Victor, and a soft golden light flowed from the end of his wand to envelop Yuuri. It left a haze across his eyes, making Victor glitter slightly.

Yuuri couldn’t see what result the spell had, but Victor was obviously satisfied, as he smiled radiantly, and vanished the scarves binding Yuuri to the chair.

“Sorry,” he said, extending a hand and pulling Yuuri up, “But I needed to know for certain that you were a wizard. There’s a lot of strange creatures out here in the woods, and I’ve always wondered when they’ll find a way around the wards…sorry, I’m rambling. I’m Victor, as you know, and you’re Yuuri, as I know. How did you get here?”

Yuuri stood in front of Victor, slightly stunned at the rapid-fire pattern of his speech. His accent was noticeable, but not thick enough to distort the words; they rose and fell in a rich cadence, and Yuuri found himself following them like music.

“I…I’m not sure,” he replied honestly, rubbing a hand across his wrists where the scarves had bound him. “All I know is that I fell asleep, and there was a strange moment like apparition, and…here I am.”

Victor peered at Yuuri again, looking thoughtful. His hair fell across his eyes, and he swiped it back from his face, jamming it behind his ear with his wand.

“Well, that is…odd. Unusual. But, who’s to say what magic is capable of while we sleep?” Victor gave another radiant smile, his eyes crinkling shut, and Yuuri felt his heart leap slightly. “It’s time for tea. Want to join me?”

Yuuri blinked, surprised at the abrupt change of subject, and nodded. Victor flung open the door, and began to lead the way down the sunlit corridor that Yuuri remembered from his first day there; his internal compass told him that they were going in the opposite direction he had taken, away from the library.

As they walked, Victor continued to peer at him sidelong from the corner of his eyes, and Yuuri could almost see the questions lining up to be asked on the tip of his tongue.

Forestalling him, Yuuri asked the question that he was possibly most curious about. “Where is here, exactly? What is this house? Is it yours?”

Victor smiled, and nodded. “This is the Nikiforov estate, and as to where we are, I’m not sure I can tell you. It’s unplottable, and you have to know exactly how to get here, though that obviously hasn’t been a problem in your case! I can tell you, however, that we are somewhere in a vast forest near a Russian mountain range. It is mine, and I live here. Is that answer enough?”

Yuuri nodded, feeling strangely detached from reality in this beautiful house with this beautiful, possibly-real man. He asked the only other question he could think of that wouldn’t lead to more questions about how he got there; “Do you live here alone?”

Victor’s face fell, and his expression closed over for a moment. “Yes, I do,” he replied, his voice quiet.

Victor didn’t say anything else as he continued to lead Yuuri down the long corridor, doors flashing past on either side; Yuuri did not find their mysteries so alluring as he had the night before, now that a far greater mystery walked beside him. He didn’t know if this man was the same person that slept in a bed, high up in the wards of St Mungo’s, or a twin, or…what?

Yuuri watched Victor’s face for a moment, and felt his bafflement deepen.

_How is this happening?_

Victor suddenly stopped, his footsteps echoing for a moment and then dying away. “Here we are,” he said, and reached for a the handle of a small and worn wooden door, holding it open and gesturing for Yuuri to go through.

Yuuri ducked slightly, and stepped inside the room.

And immediately stopped dead, his jaw hanging open.

He found himself in an indoor garden. He could just make out cast iron bands reaching far above his head, glass running between them like a giant’s greenhouse; all around him were pots and urns overflowing with flowers, peonies and snapdragons and freesias nodding with their heavy buds above his head. The garden stretched off into the horizon; Yuuri could just make out what looked like a maze in the hazy distance, and formal gardens with their straitened rows of box hedge before that. Where he stood now, the nearest feature was a bower of wisteria, woven around a cast iron frame to give the illusion of a whole canopy of drooping purple flowers.

Victor stepped through the door behind him, looked at Yuuri’s face, and smiled.

“What do you think?” he asked, gesturing expansively towards the entirety of the garden as it stretched away beyond sight.

Yuuri was rooted to the spot. “This is the most beautiful place I have ever seen,” he said quietly, his voice reverent. “Did you make this?”

Victor smiled again, gently this time, his radiance dimmed. “No; it was my mother. She spent hours and hours working out how to get the flowers to bloom all at once, without the spells interacting and going haywire.”

Victor led Yuuri forwards to the canopy of wisteria, where white wicker chairs stood by a small table, already set for tea with two delicately patterned cups. Yuuri stared at it.

Victor noticed. “Oh, that’s just the house elves; they must know I have a guest. Please sit.”

Yuuri sat, obeying orders. Victor poured the tea, and fragrant steam mixed with the heady scent of the masses of flowers blooming around them; the colours were all soft, pale yellow roses blending into deep pink peonies, which in turn led to snapdragons so dark red as to be nearly black. Victor looked like an ice sculpture among them, Yuuri thought, as he watched Victor take a sip of tea.

Yuuri followed suit, his manners overriding any surprise he felt at where he found himself.

“So, Yuuri,” Victor said. “It seems we are unwitting companions, through some strange design of magic. Tell me about yourself. Where are you from? Do you have any family? Do you have a job? Where do you live?”

Victor reluctantly paused for breath and leaned forwards, his eyes bright and intent over the rim of his tea cup.

Yuuri met his eyes, and felt his heart give that tiny leap again. “I’m really not that interesting,” he demurred, but Victor continued to stare at him expectantly, so Yuuri did his best to recall the stream of questions. “My name is Yuuri Katsuki, and I’m from England. I live in London, because I’m an apprentice healer, and I have one sister; I live with my best friend. I think that’s all there is…”

Yuuri saw Victor’s bright-eyed expression, and gulped. Somehow he suspected Victor hadn’t reached the end of his questions.

 

************

  
  
Yuuri didn’t know how much time had passed. The afternoon had blurred into a haze of sweet-scented flowers, Victor’s endless questions, and the slightly bitter taste of tea. It was all blended into a pastel coloured kaleidoscope in his mind; even years later, he could never remember as much as he wanted to of that afternoon.

They had talked for what felt like hours. Victor wanted to know everything; Yuuri’s likes and dislikes, how he felt about his studies, stories about Phichit. There was an excruciating moment in which Victor had leaned forwards and placed his hand on top of Yuuri’s where it rested on the table. Yuuri felt his touch burn like a brand, though Victor's hands were just warm from holding his tea.

“This Phichit. Do you love him?” Victor had asked, eyes very intent.

“Yes, of course!” Yuuri replied, smiling, thinking of Phichit’s melodramatic readings of fairy stories the night before. He saw Victor’s expression, and hurriedly added, “But not…you know. We never…it’s not...” His voice trailed off into silence, and Victor had paused for a moment, then continued with his questions.

They had walked through the gardens, and Victor had invited Yuuri to pick a rose if he wanted. Yuuri chose a deep blue-black variety he had never seen before; it was beautiful, though he did manage to gouge his thumb on a hidden thorn. He hid the injury from Victor, not wanting to derail the flow of their conversation, too distracted by the beauty of his surroundings and his companion to heal it himself.

The sun was low in the sky when they reached the edge of a fast flowing river, leading into a wide artificial lake. Water-lilies bloomed on its surface, pale purple and yellow, and the shadows of enormous white koi drifted lazily beneath the surface.

Victor turned to face Yuuri, and smiled. “Thank you, Yuuri, for the best afternoon I have spent in a very long time. Will you stay to dinner?”

Yuuri smiled, and nodded, the rose in his hand digging slightly into his palm. “I would love to. If you’re sure..?”

Victor smiled his most heart-stopping smile, and nodded back. He reached out a hand for Yuuri’s, to lead him back through the endless gardens, and then…

The sun dipped over the horizon.

There was a familiar sense of motion, of displaced time, sound and colour rushing past in a dizzying whirl, and Yuuri’s eyes flew open.

He sat up in bed, gasping, looking around at his still-dark bedroom.

Yuuri’s heart hammered in his chest. He had visited the mansion after all. And Victor was still there. Victor was…

Yuuri held his fists over his eyes and scrubbed, trying to bring the room into clearer focus, before he remembered his glasses and scrabbled for them. They made the room clearer, but did not ease the fog in his mind.

_What had happened?_

Yuuri took deep breaths, slowing his frantic pulse. The dream was already receding into inaccessible memory, the colours and sound of Victor’s voice blurring…was it even real?

Yuuri felt something sharp against his thumb, and looked down. There, just where the blue-black rose had pricked him, was a small cut. He peered closer. There could be no mistake; it was just the size and shape of a thorn.

Yuuri fell back into bed, his breath coming easier now. So, it was real. In a way. Or maybe it was partially real, but only to him. Was Victor real? Was he even the same man that he had met during his waking hours? They were identical in every way, so if he wasn't, what did that mean? How could he ever know, without waking the patient?

Questions buzzing like irritable bees around his head, Yuuri tried to sleep again until his alarm.

He wasn’t successful.

Yuuri waited until he heard Phichit get up, and then dragged himself out of bed, staring into his bedroom mirror.

_If I go back tonight,_ Yuuri vowed, making eye contact with his reflection, _I will ask him some questions. And I will find answers._

Yuuri stumped out of the room to make coffee, the lack of sleep settling heavily into his fogged mind.

Under his bed, the book he had used to lull himself to sleep lay discarded and innocuous, its leaves fanned open. If one looked closely, the title ‘dream dweller’ was still just visible, half-obscured by Yuuri’s bedclothes.

When Yuuri came back from his shower, he threw his clean robes across the bed, and accidentally kicked the book shut.

He didn’t remember its existence for a long time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know- this chapter is UNFORGIVABLY LATE.
> 
> I am so sorry to anyone reading this who's been waiting; this chapter fought me tooth and nail, and I rewrote it three times before I was happy. And I'm still not completely happy, but if I don't publish this version then I'll never publish anything!
> 
> Also: next chapter, I am pretty sure, will have some Victor POV. So it'll give some insight into why he was so quick to accept that a beautiful man has just appeared in his life as though from nowhere. (Hint: it's loneliness). 
> 
> I really hope you're enjoying this; if you are, please leave a comment/kudos, because I live for positive feedback. 
> 
> Love x


	7. The Last Nikiforov

By 11am, Yuuri was sure that he wasn’t going to make it through the day.

Sallowes presided at the front of the lecture room, peering over the wooden lectern like particularly puritanical pastor addressing a more-than-usually-rambunctious congregation. His reedy voice echoed dismally across the wooden desks, and reached Yuuri’s exhausted brain with all the vim and enthusiasm of a tennis ball thrown in a peat bog.

“And so, students, if we examine the precise connection of the ligament…”

Yuuri closed his eyes, and let his head thud forward on to the desk. He felt the smooth whorls of the wood imprinting themselves on his forehead, and thought that this probably wasn’t the attitude that a student on his last chance ought to be displaying, but it was so terribly difficult to care when his brain felt like it was two thousand tonnes of sodden cotton wool, thick and unresponsive. Yuuri groaned, extremely quietly.

Phichit prodded him in the ribs, and Yuuri started, jolting upright. The movement attracted Sallowes’ ever-vigilant gaze, and he spared a moment to glare at Yuuri with deepest loathing before continuing to detail the precise arrangement of bones in the foreleg of a hippogriff.

Yuuri elbowed Phichit in retaliation, and then noticed that along with the unnecessarily enthusiastic prod, he had slid a note on to Yuuri’s parchment (which contained very few notes, and several drawings of a rose in blue-black ink). Yuuri raised an eyebrow at Phichit, who nodded towards the paper in response, his dark eyes still apparently focussed with a laser-like concentration on the lectern.

Yuuri sighed, and opened the note, wondering what Phichit could possibly have to say that couldn’t wait until after class. The note read, in Phichit’s elegant looping handwriting:

_Seung-Gil’s having a party this evening. Guang Hong and Sara are both going. You’re coming too, and we’re setting forty alarms for the morning before we leave._

Yuuri blinked, and read the note again. He felt a strange sensation settle in the pit of his stomach, cold and hard and burning; not excitement at seeing his friends, not anticipation at a party…

_If I go, I won’t see Victor until I fall asleep, and even if I see him then it won’t be for long._

Yuuri identified the small, cold feeling. It was guilt. Even as he read the note, even as he sat here in this god-awful lecture, he was planning what he might say to Victor that evening, what he might ask him, how they might walk again through the indoor garden that was bigger than the Forbidden Forest. Blue eyes and a heart-shaped smile flashed across his mind’s eye, tempting, so much brighter and somehow more real than the lecture room he was in. The pastel colours of the garden filled his mind, and the phantom scent of a cupola of wisteria in bloom…

Yuuri picked up his quill, and scratched a reply. _Sorry- didn’t sleep well, don’t know how late I’ll be at the hospital, and won’t be any fun to party with. Next time._

He slid the note across the worn bench to Phichit, who somehow contrived to pick it up and read it without breaking the appearance of his superhuman focus on Sallowes’ words. The only indication that he had understood it was a tiny frown on his brow, a wrinkle between his full eyebrows that Yuuri knew meant A Conversation after the lecture. Yuuri sighed. He never came off well from their Conversations.

 

 

When the lecture was finally over, and Sallowes had swept from the room with all the imperiousness of an anointed King, Phichit turned to face Yuuri. His brow was slightly puckered still, and his full lips were turned downwards, making Phichit’s face as close to imperfect as Yuuri had ever seen it. Students were making their way out of the classroom, occasionally calling to each other across the echoing benches, and the spiralling noise made Phichit’s quiet enquiry all the more deafening in Yuuri’s ears.

“Yuuri, you’re still not sleeping well?”

Phichit’s tone was warm, concerned; Yuuri saw the worry lurking in his dark eyes. The guilt which had been sitting in his stomach began to claw its way up his throat, wrapping around his heart.

“It’s fine, Phichit-” Yuuri broke off when Phichit’s warm hand wrapped around his, where it lay on the desk.

“You never say you’re fine unless something’s wrong. What is it, Yuuri? You haven’t seemed quite yourself since the weekend.”

Yuuri smiled, and put his other hand down on top of Phichit’s, squeezing tightly. Their joined fingers brushed one of Yuuri’s drawings of a blue-black rose, and the guilt around his heart clenched tighter. He made his voice as cheerful as he could, and tried to reassure Phichit.

“I’m really okay. It’s just been a stressful week. Nearly getting expelled, meeting one of my academic idols, you know…it isn’t exactly surprising that I’ve had a lot to think about at night. I’m sure it’ll be fine by this time next week.”

Phichit peered into his eyes for a few moments, and then let go of Yuuri’s hand, beginning to shuffle his papers together and shove them into his bag. “Whatever you say, beloved. If you told me that you were a star come down to live among mere mortals, I would believe you without a second’s thought; so I shall give you the benefit of the doubt this time.” Phichit turned to Yuuri and gave one of his most radiant smiles, his dark eyes crinkling shut and his white teeth flashing.

Yuuri grinned back, relieved, and began sorting his pitifully sparse notes. He couldn't tell Phichit yet; he couldn't. It was too soon, too personal, too... _mine_ , he thought. It felt too private somehow, however irrational the feeling was, as though Victor was a secret that would disappear as soon as he shared it.

He didn’t notice Phichit’s smile falter as soon as he looked away, or the worry that was now naked in his eyes.

Yuuri stood and yawned, stretching his arms as close to the ceiling as they would go.

“Come on; library time. We’ve got that bloody test on Thursday, and I for one don’t want to even contemplate what’ll happen to us if we’re less than perfect.”

Phichit groaned, and followed Yuuri out of the classroom, into the echoing chaos of the entrance hall.

 

********

  
  
It was approaching eight o’clock that evening when Yuuri finally stepped through the cool glass frontage of St Mungo’s Hospital, and felt the strange buzz of wards rush across his skin.

He had spent the day largely in the library, trying to ignore Phichit’s melodramatic sighs whenever they encountered a topic they were unfamiliar with. The shadows cast by the bookcases had grown longer and longer, until the enchanted fires flared to life; Yuuri had finally escaped when darkness had fallen, the nights drawing in now that winter was breathing down the neck of autumn.

He and Phichit had apparated back to Noke Street, leaning on each other like a pair of gargoyles badly in need of refurbishment. They had made it to their living room in the drunken-walled house they called home, and immediately inhaled most of the food in the fridge.

Phichit had left the flat shortly before Yuuri, declaring that the party was sure to be dull and unbearable without him, but that he felt he ought to allow his people a chance to see him even if he yearned for Yuuri’s presence. Yuuri had thrown a cushion at him, and had most unusually completely missed. Phichit’s triumph at his failure had been so appallingly smug that Yuuri had cast a banishing charm on three cushions, which had then hit him square in the face one after another.

And now, here Yuuri stood, back in the barely-restrained chaos of the St Mungo’s waiting room. Bellows and shrieks and whistles assaulted his ears; Yuuri did his best not to plug his ears with his fingers like a child, and walked quickly through the mayhem, threading his way through patients and healers as efficiently as he could, only just managing to avoid being caught in the vines that one woman had managed to sprout form her head, and which were threatening to engulf the entire waiting room in the nodding foliage.

Finally, he gained the peace of the lift. The doors slid shut, and Yuuri felt that strange pulling at the base of his stomach that meant he was being carried smoothly upwards.

“ _Sixth floor, Healer’s Private Offices. Healers and Apprentice Healers only,”_ announced the soothing female voice.

Yuuri had barely stepped out of the lift when he felt something huge and rock-solid collide with his back, knocking the wind out of his lungs. He coughed, and brushed at his slightly watering eyes. From somewhere above him, a voice boomed, shattering the hospital-quiet like a thunderclap.

“Yuuri! I was just coming to find you! How’s the young reprobate this fine evening?”

Yuuri peered upwards over his glasses, and Culpepper’s grey eyes twinkled down at him, bright in his weathered face. “I’m fine!” Yuuri said, his voice squeaking slightly after his coughing fit. “How are you, sir?”

Culpepper clapped him on the shoulder again, and Yuuri felt the air he had managed to recoup since the previous time leave his lungs. “None of this 'sir' business; call me Culpepper. And I'm just fine, lad, just fine. Step into my office, won’t you? We’ll have tea.”

Yuuri followed Culpepper down a long corridor, punctuated with polished wooden doors, each bearing a name plate and a subject specialism. He caught sight of Phichit’s mentor’s room, and its polished brass plaque; _Honoria Lovelace, Experimental Hexes_. He didn’t linger, not wanting to accidentally run into the austere and slightly terrifying woman whilst he was gawping at her door.

Culpepper strode on ahead, his long legs eating the distance far more quickly than Yuuri could keep up with. This gave Yuuri the opportunity of taking a closer look at him, now that his mind was no longer buzzing with fear as it had been during their first meeting.

Culpepper was wearing the traditional lime-green robes of a fully qualified Healer, far more eye-smarting than Yuuri’s own forest-green apprentice robes, but they were patched and worn, burn-marks and small rips abounding near the hem; his greying ponytail hung down to the middle of his back. His boots were ancient leather, with soles at least three inches thick, and the clothes he wore underneath the robe seemed to be serviceable but plain. Yuuri thought that Culpepper was the most lived-in person he had ever met, worn by the years in such a way that he fit into his life perfectly.

Finally, Culpepper reached a door adorned with the words ‘ _Augustus Culpepper, Magical Beasts’_ carved into a brass plaque. It was far shinier than the others that Yuuri had seen, and he suspected that the hospital had put it up very recently.

Culpepper pushed open the door, and ushered Yuuri through. “First time I’ve ever had an office,” he said, confirming Yuuri’s suspicions; “I’m never usually around for long enough to need one, so if I’m back for a few days in between expeditions they just stick me in a broom cupboard.” He laughed his thunderclap laugh, and Yuuri smiled up at him, relieved that Culpepper’s good-naturedness had persisted past their first meeting.

Yuuri stepped through into the office. It was just as he remembered; the enormous bay window was occluded by clouds, its usual spectacular view of the London skyline dimmed by their grey mist. The fire crackled comfortingly in the grate, sending the odd shower of sparks wheeling into the air, the two ancient sofas positioned invitingly in front of it.

Culpepper gestured to Yuuri to sit, and began to make the tea. When they were both comfortably seated with a mug in their hands, he peered at Yuuri from underneath his thick, greying eyebrows, his grey eyes no longer twinkling but alert and focussed. “So, Katsuki. Sorry for dragging you in here; I just wanted to check in, and I thought it was better done face to face. Did you get a chance to read that book I sent you?”

Yuuri nodded, and took a sip of his tea, enjoying the heat it radiated through his chest after the cold London night. “It was…very interesting.” He tried hard not to remember Phichit’s dramatic reading of the Dreaming Princess, and resolutely fought to keep a smile from his lips. “I see the parallels that you mentioned. The deathlike sleep does seem…” Yuuri trailed off, as a flashing image of Victor, awake, alive, _vibrant_ , echoed through his brain for a moment and then was gone. Yuuri felt his cheeks flush slightly, and fought to keep his mind in the present moment.

Culpepper nodded, and picked up Yuuri’s sentence where he had abandoned it. “Strikingly similar, yes? I know it’s a children’s story, but as I told you at our first meeting, every story has a basis in truth. I’ve been scouring the library for mentions of any other cases, or any creature which might fit the bill, but so far no joy. Have you found anything, perchance? Not that you’ve had much free time since I last saw you.”

Yuuri shook his head, his eyebrows drawing together slightly at the admission.

“Well, no matter,” Culpepper continued, taking an enormous gulp of his still-steaming tea. “I didn’t expect you to find anything; it seems we’re up against a bit of a brick wall, thus far. I’ve been examining the patient each night, and I have a set of continuous-monitor runes attached to his vital functions, but so far there’s been no change. Not even in something as minor as hydration levels. He really is frozen in time.”

Yuuri blinked, and saw again Victor’s laughing face, suspended in his mind like a fly in amber. “Have you got any new directions you want to research? Anything I can help with? I’m not really sure how much help I can be, but I want to do anything I can…” Yuuri stopped speaking, and met Culpepper’s eyes squarely, as he saw again Victor's living face behind the dark of his eyelids. Yuuri's voice was firm, resolute. “I’ll do whatever you need me to. To cure him. Please don’t hesitate to ask me, even if you think it will be inconvenient, or too much work.”

Culpepper met Yuuri’s eyes gravely, his eyebrows drawing down into a serious line. “That is well said, Katsuki. But remember, I warned you at the beginning; we may not be able to help him. Not all illnesses have cures, not all poisons have antidotes. But we can damn well do our best.”

Yuuri nodded firmly, and for a moment he and Culpepper stared at each other, the moment hard and blazing with conviction. Yuuri could see the years of experience in the older man’s eyes, years of disappointments and failed attempts mixed with the bright successes like tar splashed across gold; _that’s what he's trying to warn me about,_ Yuuri realised, _that this might be a failure. But it won’t be. I won’t let it be. Victor... _

Yuuri blinked, and the spell was broken; he was suddenly embarrassed by the earnestness of his vow. He stared down at his knees, his easily-summoned flush painting itself across his cheeks.

Culpepper stood suddenly, surging to his feet like a mountain abruptly tired of being rooted to the earth. Yuuri looked up, surprised. Culpepper strode across the room to his desk, and reached into one of the enormous drawers, puling out something small, that caught the firelight. He threaded his way past the desk and held his huge hand out to Yuuri, the small glittering object held out to him, dwarfed by Culpepper’s palm.

Yuuri saw that it was a key, small and silver, with an unusual dome shaped end.

“This,” Culpepper rumbled from above him, “Is a key to the patient’s room. I might need you to keep an eye on those rune charts while I’m not here.”

Yuuri reached out, his fingers shaking slightly, and took the cold metal of the key in his hand. He met Culpepper’s eyes, far above his own. “Thank you,” he said quietly. “I will be careful with it.”

Culpepper nodded, and then collapsed back down onto the other sofa. “I think that’s it for tonight then, lad. No need to check on the patient this evening; just try and stop by a few nights a week to keep an eye on the runes, and alert me if anything changes. I’ll be monitoring him too, but you can never have too many pairs of eyes.”

Yuuri nodded, and stood, setting his empty mug on the small table with a small clunk. Culpepper stood too, and walked across the room to hold the door open for Yuuri, saying “I’ll see you some time this week then. Take care!”

Yuuri managed to stutter out “You too!” before the door shut behind him, and Culpepper’s enormous presence was shut off with it.

Yuuri breathed in and out slowly, the sound absurdly loud in the perfectly empty corridor. He felt the metal of the key digging into his palm, cold and solid and sharp. He felt the trust being placed in him like a weight around his neck.

Was he already betraying it?

_Why didn’t I tell him?_ Yuuri thought, and the thought was raw. But the answer came to him easily, readily; _it wasn’t the time, you weren’t discussing theories, it was just a dream, you have no proof…_

Yuuri heard a door opening, somewhere far along the corridor, and footsteps beginning to head his way. He jumped, and hurried back to the lift, his heartbeat thrumming fast in his ears.

He would tell Culpepper next time. _Next time_.

As the doors slid shut behind him, and Yuuri was carried smoothly back down into the bedlam of the waiting room, he considered whether or not he ought to stop by Seung-Gil’s party. He had been invited, but…

Yuuri avoided the now mostly-contained vine forest, and stepped through the glass frontage of the hospital. The cold night air rushed into his lungs, shocking him out of his guilty thoughts. He hurried into the small side alley, and spun on the spot, allowing himself to be drawn into darkness and crushing colour and sound for a few seconds-

He felt the air rush back into his nose with relief, and blinked. He was in the familiar, slightly-dilapidated apparition-point behind Temple station. Yuuri pulled his robes more tightly around his shoulders against the cold night air, and set off on the well-worn paving stones that followed the path of the river, allowing his feet to unconsciously follow the path he took every day.

He stared into the muddy-brown Thames as he walked, feeling his thoughts pulled along helplessly as though by the restless water. An argument spooled out between the two sides of his mind, with one voice growing fainter and fainter by the minute, the smell of wisteria heavy in Yuuri’s memory.

_I should go to the party…they’re my friends…but Victor seemed lonely, and he lives there all alone, rattling around in that mansion…but I don’t even know if he’s real! But I’ve never felt more real than when I was talking to him…he’ll be wondering why I vanished…he wanted me to stay for dinner…_

Yuuri was shocked out of his train of thought when he nearly walked straight into a muggle in a suit, who was walking in the opposite direction. He froze, stepped hurriedly out of the way, and murmured an apology. Yuuri realised his wool-gathering had taken him all the way to the alleyway that led to Noke Street.

He turned down the alley, and looked up at the archway, its ever-blooming carpet of flowers darkened by the starlit night air but still vivid. Yuuri closed his eyes and stepped through it, feeling the wards wash across his skin with their tingling warmth, into the brick-walled courtyard. The spring-fountain that everyone called Maiden’s Love was bubbling quietly in the centre of the circular lawn, the carpet of bronze knuts that had been tossed onto it by passing tourists glinting softly in the moonlight.

Yuuri stood for a moment, listening to the quiet plashing of the water. He sighed, and thought of the myth Phichit had told him; that the fountain had been created by a wizard who had fallen in love with a mermaid, so that she could visit him. He stared into the bubbling water, wondering if there was any truth to the tale, or whether it was just a fanciful story that some ancient wizard had come up with to while away the long dark evenings. He had heard that water from the spring was meant to heal the heartbroken; Yuuri was sure that that, at least, was a myth, knowing from his studies that the heart was one of the few areas where magic faltered, unable to comprehend its mysteries.

Yuuri shook himself, and walked around the circular lawn, carefully avoiding treading on its perfectly manicured green surface. He reached into the pocket of his robes, and rummaged until he found a knut. Yuuri paused, and tossed it onto the carpet of coins, murmuring “ _For luck,”_ as it landed and clinked against its twins.

He pushed open the low wooden gate, and saw that the shops of Noke Street were largely shut at this late hour. Mrs Amcott’s cheerful face was absent from her shop window, but her lamps were lit in her home above the shop; even Brewiss’ Potion Emporium, which stayed open late to cater to potion crises, was shuttered and dark. Only the Rowena’s Arms pub was still open, bright light spilling from its slightly fogged windows, loud conversations drifting from the open door. Yuuri smiled as he heard music start up somewhere in the depths of the pub, and heard a rousing chorus of the Hogwart’s school song begin.

He walked down the dark street, his footsteps tapping softly against the cobbles, and murmured along with the school song until it finished in a gale of laughter, the sound disappearing behind him as he walked. The cold moon shone brightly, and the lamps’ golden light melded with it to form a soft effulgence that was nearly as bright as sunset. Yuuri reached Knyvett Passage without incident, and pushed open the worn front door, staggering up the slightly-drunken steps until he had gained his own front door. Yuuri pushed it open, and stepped through with a strange sense of anticipation prickling across his skin.

The fire was lit, flickering quietly in the silent living room. Yuuri took a deep breath, and looked at the clock. Ten o’clock; it was late enough that Phichit would understand why he hadn’t wanted to come to the party, even if Yuuri didn’t tell him the real reason. Yuuri realised that he had made his choice hours ago, as soon as Phichit had invited him; he wasn’t sure there had ever really been a question in his mind as to what he would choose.

Yuuri padded across the smooth wooden floor to his bedroom, the usual night-time noises of owls and revellers on the street strangely absent. He pulled his robes up over his head, and hung them on the back of his door; he placed his glasses on his bedside table, cast a tooth-cleaning charm, and dove into bed.

Yuuri closed his eyes.

He dreamed.

 

************

  
  
Victor Nikiforov was the last heir to an ancient pure-blooded family.

His ancestors had, long ago, controlled huge swathes of Russia; they had had no qualms about using their magic to subdue the local serfs, believing that magic was a sign from God that they were destined to rule. It had taken the International Statute of Secrecy to drive them into seclusion, and even then it was a gilded cage; they had whole forests and mountain ranges rendered unplottable, enormous estates throughout the globe hidden from prying muggle eyes for their sole use.

Even when they lost their power over the good-for-nothing muggles, they nonetheless retained their prestige among wizards. They were important figures within the Russian wizarding community, frequently holding high office in the government, and retaining their hereditary titles. The Nikiforov’s distinctive silver hair and blue eyes were visible throughout the highest echelons of society, and wherever they went, success and wealth followed.

Success and power had led to envy. The Nikiforovs seemingly lived charmed lives; they had beauty, power, recognition and wealth. Over time, they gathered more and more enemies, until after a few centuries their numbers had been forcibly reduced to only two; Artem Nikiforov, and Sophia Nikiforova, his wife.

Artem had been a powerful and deeply moral man, and he had spent much of his life attempting to safeguard muggle rights within the Russian Ministry of Magic. Sophia had been a stalwart activist, fighting for the rights of creatures such as merpeople and werewolves. They had led a golden life, and this had been further blessed when they had had a son; they named him after Artem’s father.

Victor.

He had been born with the silver hair and blue eyes of a true Nikiforov son, and had begun displaying accidental magic within days. His parents were sure that he would grow up to be a great force for good; he had been the centre of their universe, the reason that they fought so hard for a brighter future.

And then, soon after Victor’s twelfth birthday, they had died.

Victor was away at school when it happened. He was called in to the Headmistress’s office, and seated in a high-backed leather chair, and given a biscuit. And then he was told that his parents’ car had exploded (they had been so excited about that car, he remembers thinking, so excited for the possibilities of fusing magic and muggle technology) and that he would never see them again. The aurors were not yet sure if it had been intentional; they would keep Victor updated on what they found. He had been given his father’s ring, the ring that signified him as head of the family; it was Victor’s now, bound to him by blood and magic.

The Headmistress had been kind; Victor had nodded, and thanked her politely, and then returned to his small, cold bedroom in a high tower. He had picked up the last letter that his parents had sent him, and traced the kisses that his mother and father had written in the form of x’s on the thick parchment; he had remembered his mother’s dark hair, bound in a glittering tiara for a ball, his father’s scent of cologne, his mother’s favourite lullaby in her gentle, low voice, the feeling of flying as his father had tossed him above his head with his laugh like a roaring bear.

Victor had cried for his parents, and then he had put on the family ring, and assumed the role he had been born for.

Victor was now the head of the Nikiforov family. Its last heir, its last scion; as soon as word got out, he had been inundated by letters of condolence. Most of them had been in reality thinly veiled attempts to gain his trust, to gain his influence; many had offered to become his foster parents. Victor had declined them all, following the advice of his favourite teacher Yakov Feltsman, who had been concerned enough for Victor’s welfare that he became his mentor. 

Yakov coached him through the remainder of his school years. Victor learned, slowly and painfully, to tell the difference between real friendship and an attempt to use him for his money, or his beauty, or his power; it took many years before he stopped opening his heart to each person that approached him.

When Victor left school, he moved to the wizarding capital of Morevna, sure that here he would at last find the belonging which he sought. His heart broke cleanly in two when he found that it was no different; he was praised, and petted, and people loved to have him at their parties and under their influence, but he was just a name to them, reduced to his lineage and his famous silver hair.

Victor had returned to his ancestral manor, deep in the forest, where no one could find him and offer him thin, honeyed words that disguised knives. He had stayed in touch with Yakov for a few years, but then he had stopped, unable to bear the sadness in his mentor’s letters at Victor’s self-imposed seclusion. He occupied himself with his books, and his projects; he came up with several new spells, which he patented, increasing the already vast Nikiforov wealth. He donated every penny that he made to charity.

And every year that passed, Victor felt more alone.

One night, alone in his bedroom high above the forest, Victor had finally cried. He had cried to his mother, to his father, to anyone that might be listening; _Mama, please, don’t let me die here, alone._ He had sobbed into his pillow, his damp pale hair sticking to his overheated skin, the silver moonlight slanting through the window into his reddened eyes. Victor had thrown an arm across them, blocking it out, blocking it all out; his bedroom, its silks and velvet, in this huge, empty mansion that had become his living tomb.

The night had remained silent; no one had answered. Victor had not expected them to, but the silence pierced his heart nonetheless.

He had finally fallen asleep, exhausted, and the next day he had tried to forget all about his plea to the night air, walling up his heart in ever thicker layers of ice.

And then, someone had come, as though in answer.

 

**********

 

Victor was sitting in the indoor garden, beneath the cupola of wisteria that his mother had loved. He wore ancient and well-worn gardening clothes, a pollen-splashed white linen shirt and deep blue trousers, which were soil-stained and rolled up to the ankle. His feet were bare, and the flagstones were warm underfoot.

The air was still, the scent of floral sweetness heavy in his nose. On the table was a vase of flowers; the blue-black roses that Yuuri had chosen, their petals so dark that they seemed to absorb the light, refracting it back in an intense rainbow of blues.

Victor was thinking. He always came here to think; it was bright, and calm, and it reminded him of his mother. Never had he wished he could ask her advice more than now. One topic, one name ran in circles around his mind, echoing endlessly.

_Yuuri_.

Victor reached out a pale hand, and stroked one of the velvet-soft petals. It dipped beneath his finger, soft and compliant; he remembered the feeling of Yuuri’s hand in his, Yuuri’s dark eyes alight, Yuuri’s dark hair mussed by the artificial breeze.

Victor sighed, and leaned forward to rest his head in his hands. It had been so long. So long since he had touched someone; so long since he had even wanted to, too afraid of the inevitable pain they caused him when they turned out to be just like the rest, just after the Nikiforov name. He breathed in the scent of the dark roses, and their perfume filled his nose, coating the back of his throat with sweetness. His thoughts came back, as they always did, to the endless refrain.

_Yuuri. Who are you?_

Victor had wondered, in the heat of his sleepless bed the night after he had first seen Yuuri, whether Yuuri was some kind of demon. A succubus, sent to tempt him. An enemy, who had finally made their way through his wards, sent to ensnare him and seize his wealth. Someone sent to murder him like his parents. Victor had been so sure he had the look of someone he could trust, had shaken his hand… _but haven’t I learned that you can't trust anyone?_

Victor had leapt from his bed, and spent the remainder of the night working on specialised wards. He would know the moment someone who was not himself set foot in his house. When the alarm had gone off late that morning, he had apparated directly to Yuuri, and tied him up using priceless antique silk.

And then, he had looked into his mind, though he had not told Yuuri that was what the spell would do. It was one of his own invention; not as crude as legilimency. It would show you the heart of a person, what they truly, _truly_ were. Victor had invented it after the last time he had thought someone had loved him.

He had seen Yuuri’s heart. He had seen the core of goodness at his centre; the kindness, the selflessness. The terror that he would never be enough, the gratitude for his achievements, his intense love for his family and his friends. Victor caught a glimpse of faces; an older woman, and a man, clearly Yuuri’s parents, their faces lined but beautiful, smiling. A young woman with rings in her ear, mouth quirked in a half-smile; she and Yuuri must be siblings, they were so alike. A tanned face, about Yuuri’s age, dark eyebrows and bright eyes and white teeth. Others were there too, fleetingly, but those few burned with a love so bright that Victor had felt something in his own heart burn in response, with want and loneliness and longing.

He had known in that moment that Yuuri was no demon, no spy. He wasn’t an apparition of the forest; he was a man, and somehow, he had made his way through Victor’s wards.

Yuuri had occupied his mind ceaselessly since that moment. Victor felt places in his heart that he had attempted to wall off, to seal shut forever, crashing open at the slight pressure of Yuuri’s hand on his; he felt his eternal resolve to live out his days alone in peace and contemplation waver as Yuuri smiled at him.

Victor pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. Tiny starbursts of colour bloomed against the darkness, but they did not obscure the vision of Yuuri’s smile, his eager _yes_ to Victor’s suggestion of dinner, and then…

He was gone. Just…gone. As soon as the sun dipped below the horizon, he disappeared, as though he were a phantom. But Victor knew he wasn’t; he knew he was solid, he had felt his hand, had brushed his arm, and dragged him laughing through the maze of flowers…

_It’s like a fairy story_ , Victor thought. _The beautiful prince, who disappears with the sun. Will I ever be able to show him the gardens by moonlight? They’re so beautiful, silvered and quiet and peaceful…_

Victor sat up. He shook his head, and the usual unruly strands of pale hair drifted into his eyes. He twisted them behind his head, wedging them into a bun with his wand; it never worked for long, but it was good enough for now.

His mind continued to run in ever-constant circles, approaching no nearer to the heart of the matter. Victor closed his eyes slightly against the sunlight. Maybe Yuuri could only exist in the day, he thought; he shone so brightly. Victor thought sadly of the pale reflection he saw every morning. He was like the moon; _a reflection of glory, but watery, diluted, pallid…_

He poured himself tea, and tried to allow its soothing heat to still the racing of his heartbeat and his tempestuous thoughts. He knew, deep in his bones, that he had to see Yuuri again. This was the first time since he had put on the family ring (which lay in his bedside drawer, behind sixteen separate layers of enchantments) that someone had offered him their time without expecting anything from him, had asked him about himself with no false feeling, no ulterior motives; Victor felt like a man dying of thirst who had crawled into an oasis, the lush greenery entirely alien to him.

Victor leaned back in his chair, and tried to relax. The breeze blew through the wisteria above his head in a soothing cadence, and the soft percussive hum of bees lay thick in the bright air. Victor let the sun sink into his pale skin, warming him to his bones; he tried to think only of the sensation of the sunlight, to live entirely in the present moment, and to forget about dark-eyed apparitions who had sunk tendrils into his heart that he feared may become permanent.

The moments blended together into one sun-warmed whole. Victor stretched luxuriously, and…

Shot upright in his chair, his teacup falling when he gripped the table, smashing into many delicate and very expensive pieces on the flagstones.

On the edge of his awareness, there was a faint sound of tinkling, like a small bell.

_The wards!_  

Victor leapt up, and was running before he was even aware that he had started moving, apparition forgotten in his excitement. He crammed his tall frame through the small wooden door, and followed the faint sound of the bell that only he could hear. It was louder up ahead… _left, right, right, straight on…_

Victor’s bare feet pounded against the smooth wooden floorboards, and he was grateful that they were polished well enough not to leave splinters. He skidded around a few more corners, _right, left, straight on, left,_ and-

There he was. Yuuri Katsuki, standing in the centre of the corridor, blinking and still confused, his dark eyes slightly sleepy. Victor felt his heart somersault in his chest.

Yuuri’s eyes focussed on him, and then Yuuri smiled. It was brilliant, like the sun on snow, and Victor smiled back, unable to keep his heart from racing, the happiness that he was sure he would never feel again bursting through his veins like a vine.

“You came back,” Victor breathed, his voice saturated with wonder and delight.

“I did,” Yuuri replied, still smiling, slightly breathless.

“So we have until the sun goes down?” Victor asked, reaching out a hand, his fingers steady.

Yuuri took it, and Victor stepped in closer to him, their joined hands held between their bodies like a promise.

“I suppose we do,” Yuuri said, his smile not faltering in the slightest, and his words sent jolts of joy into Victor’s starved heart.

“Good. There’s so much I have to show you!”

Victor turned, and began to walk quickly back in the direction he had come from. Yuuri had seemed to like the garden; they had barely seen half of it, and there was still so much…

Victor half turned, catching a glimpse of their still-joined hands.

He didn’t care if Yuuri was a phantom, or a ghost, or just a delusion of his finally-broken-beyond-repair heart.

He was _here_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's an update! And it hasn't been an eternity since the last one! WHO AM I?!?!
> 
> Here, at last, is some Victor backstory. I'm sorry it's so sad!
> 
> I finally have a proper plan for this fic, and so updates should be more reliable from hereon out. I half-wrote a plan which was the single saddest thing I have ever seen; when the story is finished, I'll tell you what it was, if you want to know!
> 
> I'm pretty sure that this chapter has set up the beginning of the end, in the sense that after this the story will probably move a bit more quickly. I'm not 100% sure yet how many chapters there will be overall, but it's looking like about 15 at the most.
> 
> I really hope you enjoy the update! If you did, please leave a comment/kudos; it really helps with motivation!
> 
> Love x


	8. Secrets of the Heart

It had been weeks now. Weeks of half-lived days and nights that felt as though they lasted forever.

The first few nights that Yuuri spent with Victor were sun-drenched and full of laughter, of questions, of beating hearts and tentative brushes against each other which could plausibly be accidental.

They explored. Victor had never shown anyone the endless warren of corridors that formed his estate; he had never known anyone he had wanted to show it to. Now, he and Yuuri wandered from floor to floor, and Victor opened each door that Yuuri asked for. They exclaimed together over wonders that Yuuri could never have imagined, and Victor watched his face light up with wonder, his heart pounding in his chest.

There were so many things to see, so many to share; after years of silence, Victor found his words spilling out over each other, tumbling like pebbles in a stream in his eagerness to show Yuuri anything which might make his eyes shine, or prompt his quick, secret smile. 

A globe in a darkened room that contained millions of pinpricks of light, each one a human life, flickering and changing with every birth and death, casting a constellation of mortality across the black ceiling.

A tiny library, no bigger than a palm, which contained every book that had ever been published; call a name into its depths, and the book appeared on your palm, growing in size until you held the complete volume.

A tower which held an enormous brass telescope, which would show anyone looking through it things as far away as the next continent.

Those first few days were full of gasps of wonder, and a simmering sense of imminence.

Then, things changed, and tentative brushes and half-voiced yearnings had given way to the blazing joy of years of loneliness finally lifted.

Standing on the highest tower, Victor had watched Yuuri gazing across the Nikiforov estates with the wind whipping his hair and the sun surrounding him like a halo. He had always thought that love would feel like this; all wonder, and newness, and a sense of familiarity and rightness that reached deep into his bones.

He thought that Yuuri was his own personal miracle; the man gifted to him through time and space. He didn’t know how long Yuuri was going to stay, but as the wind rippled Yuuri’s dark hair and raised slight goosebumps on his skin, Victor resolved that he was going to make the most of whatever time they would be allowed together.

When Yuuri had turned back to face him, his eyes alight and his face lit with joy, Victor had stepped carefully towards him, his eyes fixed on Yuuri’s. Yuuri’s heart had thudded erratically as Victor took another deliberate step closer, and then another; there had been a moment when their faces were a few inches apart, and Yuuri could have counted every silver eyelash that framed Victor’s burning blue eyes.

And then Victor’s lips were on his, and it was fire, and it was sweetness, and it was consuming.

The days after that were different. They explored, but for every wonder that they found hidden within the many rooms, they found as many in each other; in every gasp, and every brush of skin on skin.

They knew that their time together would be cut short by the sun. It lent an urgency to their kisses that didn’t fade as the weeks disappeared; by the time a fortnight had passed, Victor struggled to remember a time before Yuuri, a time when his heart had been so far buried in ice that he had been sure it would never be melted.

Love was the undercurrent to every touch, to every glance; the first time it was spoken aloud, they were standing by the lake that was hidden in the very centre of the indoor garden, watching the koi as they flashed white and orange in the shallows before darting away again. The light was dim, the air golden with it; Yuuri knew he wouldn’t have long, but the moment was so peaceful that he couldn’t bear to break it with speech.

Victor’s head was on Yuuri’s lap, his hair splayed out in a pale fall of silver. Yuuri tucked a flower behind Victor’s ear; one of the deep blue roses that he had picked on his first day in the garden, the kind that had left a small scar on his thumb. He reached for another, and was about to place it in Victor’s hair when he stopped, seeing that Victor’s eyes were open and focussed on his own.

Victor reached up from where he lay on the soft grass, and his heart-shaped smile was dazzling.

“I love you, you know,” he said in a voice that was quiet and reverent.

Yuuri felt his heart squeezed for a moment in his chest, emotion gripping him too tightly for an answer. When it finally let go enough for him to speak, he knew that his heart was a new shape; that Victor had left an indelible mark on him.

“That’s lucky,” he said just as quietly, as the sun dipped below the horizon, “Because I love you.”

Yuuri vanished, stolen away by the dying of the light; Victor picked up a rose where it had fallen from Yuuri’s vanished fingers, and brushed it across his lips. The velvet petals reminded him of the softness of Yuuri’s kisses, and Victor allowed his mind to drift…

He felt a sudden stinging pain on his hand, and was jolted from his memories. Victor looked down. The sun had gone in; the moon was rising. And embedded in the pad of his thumb, there was a thorn, with blood welling on either side.

Victor pulled it out, and looked up at the moon as it rose with a sigh. Another night; another whole night before he would see Yuuri again.

He rose from the grass beside the lake, and wandered back through the dark garden. The bees were silent, and the night-blooming flowers were opening their petals to the night sky, their perfume darker and richer than the bright roses.

Victor wended his way back into the mansion, his thoughts idly replaying everything that he and Yuuri had talked about that day.

He heard Yuuri’s final words echoing in his mind, and paused to look back at the moon, now fully risen, smiling at it despite that fact it heralded Yuuri’s departure.

_That’s lucky, because I love you._

They would have more time, Victor thought as he shut the door to the garden behind him, more time; time enough to repeat those words a thousand times, a thousand thousand times.

The morning couldn’t come soon enough.

 

**************

Phichit was worried about Yuuri.

Phichit was often worried about Yuuri; he had felt responsible for him, in some strange and hardly acknowledged place in the back of his mind, since he had seen him trembling beneath the Sorting Hat, its brim so large that his face was hardly visible. The sensation should be nothing new.

 _And yet,_ Phichit thought as he stared unseeing into the fireplace, _something is definitely wrong. And I’m worried._

It was early morning; that blessedly quiet time in which Phichit usually sat in the dilapidated, cosy living room of their flat, and thought about the day ahead. He was used to these hours as a sanctuary, when it was just himself and the morning sun and the calls of the early post owls. This morning was outwardly no different; winter had arrived in earnest in the last few weeks, and the clarity of the sunlight glittered on a hard frost, which rimed the window, casting fantastic sparkling rainbows across the threadbare rug.

As Phichit sipped his steaming mug of tea and stared into the dancing flames in the fireplace, he felt his mind slipping into the well-worn groove it had been spinning in for the past few weeks.

_Yuuri. Yuuri. Yuuri._

Phichit took another sip of tea, hardly tasting the sunny blend of spices.

He couldn’t put his finger on the reason why he was so concerned. It had been three weeks since the morning of their disastrous oversleeping; three weeks since Phichit had been sure that their careers as a Healer were over before they had started. And in that time, Yuuri had changed.

Phichit kept his eyes focussed, unblinking, on the flickering fireplace.

He thought back on the past few weeks. Again.

He kept hoping that something in his dearest friend’s behaviour would suddenly jump out at him, illuminating an obvious reason for Yuuri’s strangeness that he had been missing; he dutifully ran back over the past twenty one days in his mind’s eye, trying desperately to find some new pattern to them.

It was slow at first. Yuuri had had a few bad nights of sleep, he had said; Phichit had been concerned that his nightmares were back, but Yuuri had assured him they weren’t. Phichit hadn’t asked for another few days; Yuuri had reassured him that he had been sleeping better, that he was fine, that they had to study for the test and would Phichit help him with his notes?

The transparent attempts to change the subject had been what worried Phichit most; Yuuri was always at his most evasive when something was wrong. But clearly he didn’t want to talk about it; Phichit had gracefully allowed the misdirection, not pressing when Yuuri didn’t meet his eyes for a few moments afterwards. _Maybe he’s worried about exams,_ he had thought; m _aybe he’s still suffering from the aftereffects of nearly being expelled. It’ll be fine. I’m sure he’ll be back to his old self in a few days._

But he wasn’t.

Yuuri’s dark under-eye circles had become more and more pronounced with each passing night. He had stopped shouting at Phichit in the mornings; indeed, he had even stopped slamming his coffee back as though it were all that was keeping him upright. He had even _smiled_ at Phichit at seven thirty in the morning, which Yuuri had not done in the entire decade that Phichit had known him. That was when he began to really worry in earnest.

Yuuri had kept up with his work, and had not missed any of their lectures; he had even taken to going in to St Mungo’s every night to keep up with his extra project with Culpepper. Yuuri had not spoken about it much, but he had said that Culpepper thought they were dealing with some kind of never-before-seen magical beast. Phichit had been happy for him, excited; he had made some melodramatic pronouncements about Yuuri being a ground-breaking researcher, trying to provoke some kind of response beyond Yuuri’s increasingly glazed smiles. He hadn’t succeeded.

One night after two weeks of forced smiles and otherworldly, glazed eyes, Phichit had listened outside his door. He had been most unhappy with himself for doing so; but if Yuuri Katsuki was being noble and stupid and hiding his problems, then Phichit would damn well know about it. He had cast a silent finite on the door, cancelling any potential silencing charms; but there was still only silence from Yuuri’s bedroom, broken by his slow and rhythmical breathing. No sobs; no nightmares.

It had been a week since that night. A week in which Phichit had barely seen Yuuri. They had gone to school together as usual, apparating in turn as was their tradition and walking along their usual route in silence; Phichit had been unable to get much from Yuuri beyond monosyllabic answers. When they got home, Yuuri would do the preparatory work for the next day, silently inhale his food, and then go to the hospital to examine the patient he was working on. He would be out for a few hours, and then go to bed as soon as he got back; sometimes he didn’t even respond to Phichit’s ‘welcome home’ with anything more than a tired smile.

Phichit had seen all this with scared, watchful eyes. He didn’t know what was happening. He didn’t know what to do. This wasn’t something that he knew how to deal with from his experience with his siblings, or from Yuuri’s previous behaviour; he had felt his heart fracture slightly with every monosyllabic response, and with every lessening of the usual mischievous light in Yuuri’s eyes. There was one spell that he had found in his notes the week before, one that he had been considering, but he didn’t want to use it unless he had no other choice…

Phichit had resolved to have a serious talk with Yuuri, to try and give him the opportunity to tell him what was wrong in a comfortable environment, before Phichit used his spell of last resort. The problem was that Yuuri had been going to bed earlier and earlier, saying that he was tired, that he was going to try and sleep while he could before the final exam season arrived; Phichit had barely seen him, let alone had an opportune moment to bring up something so apparently serious.

 _Please let there be a moment soon,_ he thought, as he reached the end of his re-examination of the past three weeks; _please let me find a way to help him soon._

Phichit’s ruminating was broken by the sound of a door opening quietly. Yuuri emerged from his bedroom, showered and dressed in his robes, his dark hair combed back from his forehead. His expression was vacant, his eyes slightly glazed; there was a half smile on his mouth, as though he had just been sharing a joke with someone and the humour hadn’t entirely left his face.

Phichit stared at him.

Yuuri wandered over to the kitchen counter, and poured half a mug of coffee. He sipped at it, the morning sun bright on his face, and then put it down, the _thunk_ of china against countertop deafeningly loud in the silent, tense atmosphere of the flat.

Yuuri took his wand out of his sleeve, and spun on the spot, disappearing from Phichit’s view.

Phichit leapt to his feet with an inarticulate cry. He seized his wand, and spun, following Yuuri into the blur of apparition; when the world righted itself, Yuuri was a few feet ahead of him in the alleyway by the Medical School, his green robes billowing in the cold breeze. The ground was white with frost; Yuuri's breath hung in the frigid morning sunlight in a cloud. It was quiet, too early for the usual pedestrian traffic. 

Phichit stood on the ice-covered ground, and stared at the man who had been his closest companion for a decade, and who had in the space of three weeks seemingly forgotten he existed. His back was to Phichit now, and his hand was already reaching for the doorway to the Medical School. 

“Yuuri!” Phichit shouted, his voice half-cracking with anger and disuse.

Yuuri turned, his expression mildly surprised.

“Phichit? What’s wrong?” he asked, and Phichit felt his heart snap cleanly in two.

“We always apparate _together_! Why did you leave without me?” Phichit said, and the tears that threatened to spill from his eyes burned and smarted in the cold air.

“Oh, Phichit- I’m sorry, I just wasn’t thinking. Next time?” Yuuri reached out a hand towards Phichit, his eyes wide and innocent, looking for a moment like the Yuuri that Phichit knew, the Yuuri he loved. Phichit looked at the offered hand for a few moments, his heart pumping loudly in his ears, the anger in his heart melting away and leaving only the hurt that had been spreading like corrosion for the past three weeks.

As Phichit let the moment stretch, still staring at Yuuri’s outstretched hand, he felt resolve harden in his heart. Something was terribly, terribly wrong, and Yuuri wasn’t talking to him about it.

Phichit thought about the hastily copied spell that was currently hidden under his pillow.

_I have no choice._

Phichit took Yuuri’s hand, and let him pull them both through the tiny, half-broken door to the Medical School.

 

**********

  
  
Yuuri felt as though he was living in a dream, or a fairy tale.

It was evening, and the moon was high and full over the London sky, managing to eclipse even the eternal brightness of the streetlights with its silver blaze. Darkness rose from the pavements, fighting a losing battle against the pale radiance, swirling around the knees of the populace as they hurried through the dark streets.

St Mungo’s was quiet at this late hour, the daytime hubbub substituted for the hush that always seemed to lie heavily over the clinically clean corridors. The bedlam of the accident and emergency department was largely stilled; the only noises were the occasional click of a Healer’s footsteps, or a distant cry of pain that hung like a spectre of anguish for a few moments before dissipating.

The silence was even more complete this high up, far removed from the rest of the wards. Yuuri was grateful for it; he didn’t want his vigil interrupted.

Yuuri sat in a chair next to Victor’s bed. It wouldn’t be long, he knew, before he saw him again, but the daylight hours had begun to seem interminable, their separation more painful; Yuuri longed for night to fall, for it to be late enough that he could go to bed without arousing suspicion.

 _Soon_ , he thought, _soon_.

He ran his fingers through the silver hair that just the night before he had braided with flowers in the endless indoor garden, and allowed his thoughts to unwind, loose and free-flowing as the river that wound through the mountains surrounding Victor’s estate.

Yuuri had never been in love. Not really, not in a way which encompassed his heart and mind and his whole being. He had liked people before, had had crushes, had felt the first inkling of a smouldering deep in his heart, but it had always been snuffed out after a while, had never taken hold enough to really burn.

This love set his heart on fire, a blazing pyre that consumed and consumed but did not go out.

He was aware, in some distant part of his brain, that Phichit had probably noticed something was different. He had even considered telling him what was wrong; but the small voice in the back of his head had whispered that he wouldn’t believe him, that he might think Yuuri was mad.

 _Or_ , the voice had whispered, _maybe he’ll tell someone else. Someone that will stop you coming back. Someone that will keep Victor from you forever._

And so Yuuri had kept his silence, choosing not to burden Phichit with his greatest secret. It was better this way; easier for both of them.

During the day, he did his schoolwork. He attended every lecture, and answered questions that were directed at him politely and usually correctly. He smiled when he was smiled at; he spoke when he was spoken to.

But increasingly, Yuuri felt as though he were moving through deep water during the day, sound and light dimmed and bending as though refracted through miles of ocean. It all felt distant, unreal.

He had continued his research, had read endless books on the subjects that Culpepper directed him to; he had dutifully written reports on their contents, despite that fact that none of them had provided much interesting information. There had been odd hints and flashes of something between the lines, some half-truth that if Yuuri had been able to focus he might have seized as a new direction in which to take their research; but like everything else, it felt distant, irrelevant.

He had even considered telling Culpepper the truth. He had almost done so on numerous occasions, when they sat before the enormous man’s fire on his worn-out sofas; but something had always held him back. As he stared at Victor’s angelic, sleeping face now, Yuuri thought he knew that it was.

Despite the muffled and distant nature of most of his daytime thoughts, Yuuri had one persistent question that lingered in his brain like a fluttering, anxious bird in a cage.

How long would he be permitted to visit Victor by night? When would whatever was connecting them break?

If he didn’t have much time with Victor, Yuuri would not imperil what he did have by telling people about it. They might not understand. They might try and stop him.

He had felt bad, that morning, when Phichit had stared at him as though he had finally broken something which had long been in disrepair. But it was just one apparition; Yuuri had woken with the touch of Victor’s lips still on his, the vibrations of his voice still thrumming in his chest, and his mind had been far too occupied to remember one tiny thing like their tradition of apparating together.

 _And besides, Phichit forgave me,_ Yuuri thought as he ran the silver hair between his fingers, counting the minutes before he would see Victor smile again.

 _Soon_.

 

**************

  
  
Phichit waited for Yuuri to get back that night with a sick tension lying heavy in his stomach, cold and hard and leaden. He had practiced the spell, and had managed to cast it silently. Now all he could do was wait.

Yuuri got back at about ten o’clock. His expression was faraway, his eyes glazed; he vaguely waved a hand in Phichit’s direction before disappearing into his bedroom.

Phichit stoked the fire, and a column of embers billowed into the air like a warning spray of wand sparks. He waited, his shoulders tense, the set of his mouth grim and hard and a thousand miles away from his usual sunny warmth.

Finally, it was midnight. Phichit was not tired; he was not a night owl, but his mind was too full of turmoil to admit sleep. He stood gracefully, and murmured a charm; the fire died down to embers, casting a flickering light and a wash of warmth across the living room.

Phichit gritted his teeth. He cast a quick _silencio_ on his bare feet, and padded silently across the floorboards. Rather than continuing on to his bedroom, he paused at Yuuri’s door, and listened intently.

Heavy breathing, rhythmical and slow; Yuuri was asleep.

Phichit took a deep breath, and allowed himself a moment of doubt. Could he do this to his best friend? What if Yuuri found out? What if…?

Then he remembered Yuuri’s distant, unfocussed gaze that morning. His casual abandonment of their years-old tradition, and his increasingly reclusive behaviour.

He steeled himself.

 _This is for you,_ he thought. _And if you hate me afterwards, then I don’t care, as long as you’re safe._

Phichit pointed his wand at the door, and silently intoned _transparentem_.

The door disappeared from sight, leaving only a faint smudge in the air to tell him that it was still there.

Phichit stared through it, trying not to breathe too loudly. There was Yuuri’s room, silvered slightly by the moonlight which filtered through his curtains; there was his bed, rumpled and messy. And there was Yuuri, his dark hair splayed across the pillow, a smile on his face despite the fact that he was very clearly asleep.

Phichit gazed at him for a moment, and love and worry rose like a choking tide in his throat. Yuuri’s face was so much younger in sleep. Phichit felt his decision growing easier by the moment.

 _Secretem clavem_ , he thought, pointing his wand at Yuuri’s heart, channelling his magic into the spell with as much force as he dared.

There was a pause, and Phichit wondered if he had somehow got it wrong, if he had made an error with the spell. He felt panic lick at the pit of his stomach, and was about to burst into Yuuri’s room to check he had done no harm, when-

It was slow at first.

Above Yuuri’s head, bright in the dark night air, a flickering flash of colour appeared. Phichit froze, his hand extended for the doorknob, and slowly lowered it.

There was another; a splash of bright silver. And then another, and another, until the air was full of darting colourful shadows that spun together into a vision of…

Phichit paled. A vision of a man, his face enough close to Yuuri’s that Phichit could see the distribution of dark and ice blue in his irises, his pale face angular and so close, too close…

Then he was gone, and there was another view in the dark of Yuuri’s bedroom, the slips of colour dissipating and then reforming to show a forest, viewed from a high tower. The silver haired man was there again, his face laughing.

Phichit felt his mouth go dry. The images continued to dissipate and reform, dissipate and reform…

A library, its ceiling arching over head, candles drifting through the air.

A corridor, with hundreds of doors, stretching off into the distance.

A staircase bursting into bloom beneath feet that must be Yuuri’s.

A garden, extending as far as the eyes could see, a riot of colour; Phichit could almost smell the sweetness of the banks of roses, feel the warmth of the golden sunlight….

Phichit stood rooted to the spot, mesmerised by the flashing images. They were beautiful; but there was something…

Phichit leaned forwards, squinting slightly, trying to make out the slight wrongness that he felt stayed hidden, just out of the corner of his eye. It was there for a moment, and then gone, some kind of shadow…

And then the bright pictures disappeared, and reformed again, this time into something that was not books, or flowers, or a rolling set of hills.

Phichit felt a cold hand seize his heart.

It was small, and it was facing away from him, obscuring his view. It seemed to be curled in on itself, its back to Phichit. He could see only pale skin, stretched tight over what looked like a spine, which was rising and falling in apparently laboured breathing. He could just make out the shape of what must be feet beneath it, ending in long, silver claws…

Phichit gasped, the noise tiny, almost lost in the quiet night. And yet the thing in front of him must have heard; it stiffened, the pale skin stretching taut, as though it would rip across the attenuated knobs of its spine. Phichit heard a hiss, and then the vision disappeared, splintering apart as though ripped.

He stood for one long moment in the dark corridor.

And then he sprinted for his room, heedless of noise.

Phichit ripped open his desk drawer, and seized parchment and a quill, his mind working frantically.

 _That spell should have shown me what Yuuri was keeping secret,_ Phichit thought and his shaking hands tried to uncap his ink bottle. _What was all that? The house, the man..?_

His trembling hands managed to spill the ink across the blank parchment, and Phichit cursed. He reached for his wand, and vanished it, before picking up his quill.

_And what was that… thing? _

He paused for a moment, and took a long, slow breath, trying to slow his heartbeat enough to write without his hands shaking.

Finally he managed it.

When Phichit had finally finished, he sealed the parchment with one of the most forceful locking charms he knew. It would only be opened by the addressee, of that he could be sure.

Phichit wrote the name and a short note on the front of the bound scroll.

_Healer Augustus Culpepper, St Mungo’s Hospital. Urgent: please read immediately._

He tapped the scroll with his wand, and it disappeared in a small puff of white smoke.

Phichit leaned back on his chair, his heart still pounding. He felt that sleep was a long way off tonight.

He moved over to his window, and perched on the sill, staring out across the rooftops. They glistened with another hard frost; heavy clouds were beginning to swirl in the distance, and Phichit thought it might snow soon.

He remembered snow days at Hogwarts, his and Yuuri’s noses pink and their hands numb, the fire in the Common Room always so warm after their snowball battle royale.

Phichit curled in on himself, and allowed a sob to escape from between his clenched teeth. He _would_ help Yuuri, whatever the cost.

Even if the cost was his trust, or his friendship.

Phichit fell asleep eventually, propped in his window seat.

And although he couldn’t know it, far away across London in an office with a low-burning fire, his letter was already being read.

Next door, Yuuri’s smile did not leave his face as he slept, undisturbed by Phichit’s spell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ALL ABOARD THE ANGST TRAIN! 
> 
> I feel like I need to clarify: this story WILL have a happy ending. I promise. It might be a little dark for this chapter and the next one or two at most, but after that the silver lining will appear with a vengeance. I hope it's not too much; I honestly hadn't intended for the tone to be this bleak when I started writing, but it sort of happened without me noticing. 
> 
> Next chapter there will be fallout from Phichit's snooping; poor darling only wants to help.
> 
> Please let me know what you think; and endless love to everyone who has told me they're enjoying this so far! 
> 
> Also, please do come and say hello on tumblr- I've only recently started trying to use it more often! I'm at cox-orange-pippin on there. I'd also love for anyone to send me asks with prompts/requests; I've been in a bit of a slump recently and apart from working on a few new fics that I haven't published any of yet, I'd love some drabbles or oneshot requests to try!
> 
> Love to everyone reading x


	9. Maiden's Love

The sun was setting over the forest. _Just a few more moments, just a few more-_

Sound and colour and light and noise blurred together into one, and Yuuri was falling, falling-

_Victor…don’t go-_

Yuuri opened his eyes, and sighed when he saw the plain ceiling of his bedroom, prosaic and familiar. It was still dark, but there was a faint glow in the air that told him it was morning; the air was cold, with the metallic aftertaste of a hard frost.

Yuuri closed his eyes again, resolutely trying to hold on to the last few moments of his dream, to cling the world just the other side of sleep where he knew Victor was waiting.

_Victor’s fingers skimming his cheek, winding through his hair, the smell of books mingling with the smell of pine bookshelves and the soft light of the library candles…_

Yuuri opened his eyes again, his heart sinking with acceptance.

It was no good. He was awake.

Yuuri sighed again, and hauled himself upright, running one hand across his cheek, following the path Victor’s fingers had taken a moment before. He groped for his glasses, and wedged them crookedly onto the bridge of his nose. Another day. Another twelve hours in the waking world.

It was a little harder, day by day, night by night, to come back to his silent and empty room. A little harder to say goodbye, a little harder to return to this mundane reality in which Victor was just an ice-cold statue of perfection.

And every time he woke, Yuuri feared that this night would be his last glimpse of paradise, of Victor. This morning was no exception; Yuuri could feel the thought curled around his heart like a viper, fangs sunk deep into his very core, poisoning the new day. He tried to keep the thought locked and barred deep in his unconscious, but it snuck through the bars of its prison in the dim early morning light, when he was half-asleep, still warm from Victor’s lips on his, still gasping from their goodbyes…

Yuuri shook his head to clear it of the unwelcome thoughts and stood, flinching slightly at the iron-cold wooden floor against his bare soles. The air felt unusually cold; he pulled the blanket off his bed and draped it around his shoulders, tucking the ends in around his waist against the chill.

Yuuri walked to the window, and flung the curtains open, determined to start the day so that it would be over as soon as possible.

As the curtains flew open, Yuuri immediately recoiled, blinking back tears from his suddenly streaming eyes.

Three feet of snow lay on the rooftops, reflecting the bright morning sun in a blinding white sheet. The snow stretched as far as Yuuri could see, across Noke Street and out into muggle London; it hid a multitude of sins, hiding discoloured paint and missing tiles, smothering discarded potion bottles and newspapers until the whole street was pristine.

The air was so clear and cold that Yuuri could almost make out the individual shapes of the snowflakes that rested against his window frame.

Yuuri smiled, eyes still streaming slightly from the blinding sunlight. It reminded him so much of Hogwarts, of the enormous snowball fights he and Phichit always had in the first snow of winter; Phichit nearly always won, as he was utterly ruthless and had a penchant for shoving snow down Yuuri’s back. They always paid for their fun with colds and doses of Pepperup potion, but it was worth it. The memory felt hazy, distant somehow, but it was enough to warm Yuuri’s heart as he gazed out at the haphazard snowdrifts.

He opened the window, and felt a blast of frigid air gust indoors. It was invigorating; Yuuri felt some of the fog he had grown used to lifting from his mind in its chill. He stretched out a hand, and grasped a handful of snow from where it lay on his windowsill; he threw it aimlessly, watching the powder drifting down to the silent street below.

He wished Victor could see it.

Yuuri leant his elbow on the window frame, and rested his head in his hand. His dark hair fell into his eyes, in stark contrast with the brilliant whiteness of the snow; he pushed his glasses up onto his head, and the dark and light blurred into a kaleidoscope of unintelligible shapes. The world was still, and silent in the way that only a fresh snowfall can bring; all was peaceful, unmoving, with a cathedral hush.

Except it wasn’t. Yuuri blinked. Something in the distance was moving quickly, a tiny dark blur, and it looked as though it was coming his way.

He pushed his glasses back down unto his nose, and squinted against the brilliant sunlight.

_What is that? A cloud? A pigeon?_

The shape soared upwards above the rooftops, and darted straight for Yuuri’s window. He finally recognised it as an absolutely enormous owl, moving uncannily gracefully for a creature whose wingspan was probably as long as Yuuri was tall.

He stepped backwards hurriedly, and the owl soared through his open window, shaking snow off its storm-coloured wings and onto his floor. It settled on his bedpost, staring at him with narrowed amber eyes, and stuck out a leg; Yuuri could just make out a scroll with his name on it in Culpepper’s elegant script.

The owl gave him an admonitory hoot when Yuuri continued staring at it blankly, mesmerised by its sheer size. He blinked, and hurried forwards, removing the scroll with hands numbed by the cold air; the owl didn’t leave when he had taken it, but continued to stare at him imperiously.

A little unnerved by his audience, Yuuri unfurled the scroll; he was sure it was just another note asking that he read a particular book, or that he learn a new spell for the coming evening.

_Y-_

_Can you come in this evening for a chat? I want to catch up on the project with you._

_C_

Yuuri raised an eyebrow. He had been going to St Mungo’s every evening for the last few weeks to spend time with Victor; Culpepper knew that.

_So why is he asking if I can come in tonight in particular…?_

There was a disgruntled hoot from the bed, and Yuuri looked up. He had forgotten his audience.

“Are you waiting for a reply?” he asked, and the owl blinked at him with obvious disdain. Yuuri reached for a quill, scrambling through the odds and ends on his desk, and finally found one with half its feather missing, the remaining stub ink-splattered and threadbare. He turned the parchment over, and scratched an agreement before resealing the letter and holding it out.

The owl reared, spreading its wings, and darted its head forward to nab the letter from Yuuri’s grasp. It gave him one final, measuring look, and took off through the still-open window.

Yuuri followed it, and pulled the window closed against the billowing cold. He shivered.

Another day in the half-real, grey world, until he could return to Victor, and warmth, and colour.

It felt like the night was a lifetime away.

 

*************

  
It was late when Yuuri arrived at St Mungo’s that evening.

His lectures had passed in a half-aware daze, and he had spent several hours in the library on his research; he had been taken aback when the librarian had evicted him at nine o’clock, stating that she needed to go home even if he didn’t.

Yuuri apparated to the hospital, and wobbled as he nearly lost his footing. The snow was still thick on the ground, even after a day of commuter’s feet trudging through it; it was no longer white and pristine, but muddied and piled into forlorn heaps at every street corner. Street lamps painted it a dull orange, in a mockery of its earlier splendour in the morning sun.

Yuuri sighed, wishing that he was here to see Victor rather than to have a catch-up on his research. Maybe if he was quick, he could still see Victor before apparating home…

He stepped through the cool glass, and into the usual bedlam of the foyer. After much practice, Yuuri had become extremely adept at dodging both errant patients and the hurrying Healers who were trying to restrain them. He made his way across the crowded space to the lifts, narrowly avoiding a fireball; it sailed past his left ear and set fire to the collection of old Witch Weekly’s in the waiting room.

Yuuri stepped into the lift, and heard the panicked cries of _aguamenti!_ shut off abruptly behind him with the closing doors. There was the usual strange sensation of his stomach dropping away through his shoes as the lift rose smoothly upwards, finally stopping at the sixth floor. The doors slid open, and Yuuri stepped out, feeling an unaccountable anxiety growing in the back of his mind.

The corridor that led to Culpepper’s office was deserted; Yuuri’s footsteps were deafeningly loud against the polished marble.

Yuuri paused outside Culpepper’s wooden office door for a moment. Usually, he could hear Culpepper humming or talking to himself; once, he had heard him bellowing a surprisingly tuneful sea shanty as he worked. Today there was only silence. The incipient sense of not-quite-rightness grew as Yuuri stared at the brass nameplate that read _Augustus Culpepper, Magical Beasts._

Yuuri raised a hand to knock, but the door opened before his fist could fall. Culpepper was there, silhouetted in the doorway, his enormous form blocking out the firelight; for a moment his huge dark shape seemed strange, and remote, and frightening.

But the moment passed as quickly as it had come. Culpepper stepped backwards with his usual warm smile, and the firelight lingered in the deep-worn crevices around his eyes.

“Good evening, young Katsuki!” he rumbled, gesturing for Yuuri to sit on one of the ancient green sofas. “Tea?”

Yuuri nodded, smiling back with as much enthusiasm as he could. He liked Culpepper, and he always enjoyed the time they spent together; but he could not get out of his head the fact that this was time he could be spending with Victor. He was so nearby, so _close_ …

Yuuri was jolted from his thoughts by a mug appearing in his hands, the slightly too hot ceramic burning against his palms. Yuuri wasn’t sure when he had moved, but Culpepper was sitting opposite him on the other sofa, watching him with an unreadable expression that Yuuri had never seen on his face before. He was usually so open, so expressive, cheerful and irreverent; it was as if something in his eyes had closed which had always been open. Yuuri couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but…

_Something’s different, something’s wrong…_

Yuuri blinked, and tried to cudgel his unwilling brain into the present, into the room that he sat in rather than a garden in a far-off estate. He took a sip of his too-hot tea, and tried to let the burning on his tongue shock him into alertness.

He waited for Culpepper to speak, but he didn’t. He just sat and watched with that same inscrutable expression, far removed from his usual jovial openness, firelight flickering on his weathered face.

Yuuri opened his mouth to break the silence, but Culpepper forestalled him, his voice low and serious.

“I’m going to ask you a question, Yuuri, and I would like a truthful answer. Can you give me that?”

Yuuri felt his mouth go suddenly dry. _There’s no way, no possible way he could know…_

The silence stretched on, and Yuuri realised Culpepper was waiting for an answer.

“Ye-” he began, but his voice cracked from disuse. Yuuri coughed, and tried again. “Yes”.

Culpepper nodded slowly, his greying ponytail falling across his chest as he leaned forwards on to his elbows. His face was several feet away from Yuuri still, but his gaze was so focussed that it seemed to suck all the air out of the room; Yuuri could hear the rushing of blood in his ears, and the world seemed to narrow to the storm-grey eyes that were focussed on his with frightening intensity.

Yuuri heard a log fall in the fireplace, and the muffled crash was deafeningly loud in the sudden vacuum; it broke a tiny amount of the tension, and Yuuri was able to blink.

Culpepper considered him for one more moment, and then sighed. His face was distant, and strangely sad; nothing like the bluff, cheerful man Yuuri knew. Yuuri felt the tension in his heart spiralling tighter and tighter, dizzying, constricting, winding around the silence like thread on a bobbin…

After what seemed like an age, Culpepper spoke again, and the question made Yuuri’s heart skip in his chest.

“Is there anything you want to tell me?”

Yuuri stared. His blood roared in his ears, a thousand times louder than the quiet hissing of the fire. Culpepper’s eyes pinned him down like a bird before a snake, all-knowing, but…

_He can’t know. He doesn’t know. And if I tell him, I might never…._

“No, sir. There’s nothing.”

Yuuri’s voice was surprisingly firm, and too loud in the powder-keg dry atmosphere of the firelit office.

Culpepper held his eyes for a moment longer, searching, and then looked away with a sigh. He leaned forwards, and pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, eyes closed and mouth set in a grim line.

He spoke with his eyes still closed. “Yuuri, I am about to tell you a story. It’s one that happened a long time ago, but it is still painful to relate, and so I ask that you do not interrupt me. No matter what thoughts you may have, or questions you may wish to ask. Alright?”

Culpepper opened his slate-grey eyes and sat up straight, hands braced on his knees as though he needed the support. Yuuri nodded mutely. _What’s happening, what is this, what is he saying…_

But then Culpepper began speaking, and the cadences of his deep, measured voice drew Yuuri away from the office, away from his adrenaline drenched heart, to another place, another time.

“When I was young, I wanted to be a Magizoologist. That was my first love, not Healing. I spent the first few years of my life driving my mother insane with ‘rescued’ creatures; she never quite forgave me for the time I deliberately hatched an ashwinder in the kitchen, and damn near burned the house down.”

Culpepper smiled, lost in the memories. Yuuri had a brief vision of a grubby child, hands covered in mud, holding up a niffler for the inspection of a horrified parent; he almost smiled at the image. _But what does this have to do with...?_

“For years, that’s what I thought I would do. I took Care of Magical Creatures at Hogwarts, and as soon as I graduated, I set off on a journey to the most deserted places I could think of. I wanted to find never-before-seen creatures, to understand them, to become known as the greatest Magizoologist since Newt Scamander;  
for a few years, I tramped across the globe in search of new adventures. I travelled alone; no one else was mad enough to come with me. I was deliriously happy. Always muddy, always living out of a tent, but happy.”

Culpepper sighed, and his eyes tightened. Yuuri abruptly remembered that there was pain in this memory.

“That was when I got the call that there had been some sightings of a strange creature in the Scilly Isles. Some men had gone missing, and there had been whispers and hints that on one of the remoter islands, there was a new threat, a new creature that was preying on muggles and wizards alike. They’re a strange place, those islands, very magical, sparsely populated…fiercely beautiful. I was interested. So interested, that I immediately packed up my tent and went to investigate.

I set up camp on a hillside on one of the hardly-populated islands. I wanted to be able to observe without being observed, you know; and I suppose I’ve never really got on with people as well as I ought to, and I hated the idea of staying in town. It was peaceful there, wild and lonely, and for a few nights I didn’t see anything amiss.”

Culpepper leaned backwards, and his perpetually upturned mouth became a grim slash across his face. He looked older, more tired, and infinitely more dangerous. Yuuri felt his palms sweating; this was the wizard, after all, who had been places and done things that no other wizard had dared to do. It was far easier to believe that now.

Culpepper’s eyes grew dark, and his tone was less even as he continued his tale.

“The first time I saw her, she was standing by the shore. The sea was rough that night, and it was raining; I had retreated into my tent because the visibility was so poor. But then, I heard her singing. It was like…like nothing I have ever heard, before or since. I will remember it until my dying day.” He sighed, and dragged one hand across his eyes for a moment, rubbing them as though trying to blot out the images that were flashing through his mind.

“I couldn’t not follow; I didn't even think of not following. I immediately left my tent, without even pausing to put on a coat, and followed the sound down to the edge of the sea. She was standing silhouetted against the moon, singing to the waves…”

Culpepper’s voice held an edge of longing, and Yuuri heard the raw emotion lying closely against the words, hidden just out of sight like a cliff edge shrouded in mist.

“She was beautiful. So, so beautiful. Skin so pale that she seemed to have stepped straight from the moonlight itself, hair so long that it nearly brushed the pebbles of the water’s edge…I walked towards her, and she turned to look at me, and then she ran. I wandered back to my tent, and that was how it began.”

Yuuri felt a knife-sharp twist in his heart. He knew only one other person who was pale, and beautiful, as though born of moonlight- _but it isn’t the same, it can’t be, Victor doesn’t…_

Culpepper looked down at Yuuri, his gaze serious and leaden.

“Every night, I heard her singing. It took a long time, but eventually she began to stay when I approached, to talk to me, to trust me. Or so I thought. She was like no one I had ever met before, and her voice…”

Culpepper closed his eyes for a long moment, and then opened them again, and stared straight at Yuuri as he continued. Grey fire blazed in his eyes, and curled in smouldering tendrils from his voice.

“Her name was Ula, and I loved her. Or I thought I did. Not that it made much difference in the end. We spoke every night for two months, for hours on end, and I forgot my research, forgot to reply to letters, forgot everything but her. And she said that she loved me, too. I didn’t even realising the net that was closing around me until it had snapped shut.”

Culpepper paused, and reached up to the neck of his robes. He pulled out a chain, and tugged it over his head, keeping his fist closed until he had lifted it free of his long hair. He extended his weather-beaten fist towards Yuuri, and then opened his hand.

Yuuri’s heart ached. There, glittering in the firelight, was a ring. It had a diamond set into the plain gold, and Yuuri was sure he knew, now, where this story was going. He didn’t want to know, didn’t want to hear, but Culpepper’s voice continued relentlessly, low and determinedly even.

“I knew, by that point, that I couldn’t live without her. I was going to give this to her, to ask her to marry me, to come with me wherever I went; and if she’d asked, I would have followed her, given up my wandering. I would have given up anything.”

Culpepper stared down at the diamond in his hand, as though willing it to finish the story for him. It glittered, sending tiny rainbows dancing across his sun-browned skin.

“I went down to the beach one night, having finally found the nerve to ask her. I was early; I was too nervous to wait until I heard her voice calling me. There was almost no moon, the stars were out, and the sea was calm. She was standing there as always, with her hair streaming out behind her in the wind. But she was facing away from me, and she seemed to be holding something. I couldn’t see what it was. I walked closer, and she didn’t turn, didn’t even seem to know I was there until I called her name.

She turned then, and I saw why she hadn’t heard me call. She had been eating.”

Culpepper swallowed convulsively, and his eyes closed for a moment. Yuuri felt bile rise in the back of his throat.

“It must have been a rabbit, once, or something similar. But by then it was a bloody mess, and her arms and face were covered in blood; her eyes were black, and her face was…not human. She saw me coming towards her, and she hissed, and then she began to run towards me and even though she was smeared in gore, even though her teeth were bared and angled for my throat, I couldn’t…”

Culpepper’s hand clenched convulsively around the diamond in his hand, killing the dancing rainbows that refracted from its depths. With visible effort, he forced his voice back to the same measured tone he had used before.

“I’ll spare you further details. I managed to apparate away, and I went straight to the ministry. They sent a team to deal with it. With her. The siren. It turns out she had laid the same trap for other men before me, men who had not been magical, and who had not been able to escape. The ministry told me she had a collection of rings in her pockets.”

Culpepper sighed, and the fire leeched out of his voice, replaced by a hard-won peace.

“That was when I abandoned my career as a Magizoologist. I couldn’t continue, not with that behind me, not while I was still so raw. So I dedicated myself to Healing, to try and save others from the pain that I had suffered; if I could find these creatures, catalogue them, know how to cure those afflicted by them, maybe I could atone for my own gross misjudgement. Eventually, I was able to venture out into the wilds again; you know the rest of the story.”

Culpepper folded his palm around the ring, and hung the chain back around his neck. The diamond glittered innocently in the firelight.

“I wear this as a reminder of what my stupidity almost cost me, and as a way of fighting against the lures of the creatures I study. I won’t be taken in again, and I vowed to protect others from such snares.”

Culpepper looked directly at Yuuri, meeting his eyes and holding them, his expression very grave.

“So, I’ll ask you again Yuuri. Is there anything at all you want to tell me?”

Yuuri opened his mouth to say no, to deny everything, to save Victor, to save himself, but-

The tears began to fall before he could speak so much as a syllable. They were silent, and hot, and they coursed over his cheeks like a burning flood. Pain lodged itself in Yuuri’s throat, an obstruction too large to ignore, and he was speaking without having consciously chosen to do so.

“I…I dream of the patient. Of Victor. They’re not really dreams, they’re more real than that, they’re more real than anything that I’ve ever…it’s been weeks, weeks, and I see him every night. He’s…”

It was as though a dam which he hadn’t realised he had built had cracked, and a trickle of water had made its way through the stones. Yuuri could feel the words building up behind his teeth, restrained only by his fragile hold on himself.

“Yuuri. I understand.” Culpepper’s voice was kind, and sad, and Yuuri looked up through his streaming eyes. The diamond ring glinted against Culpepper’s robes.

The dam burst.

Yuuri told him everything. Everything. From that first meeting in the patient’s room, to the miraculous first meeting in the dream-world; wonders and conversations and weeks of exploration, all related in a flat monotone. The words that Yuuri had kept unspoken for so long thundered through his heart in a drowning torrent, out into the quiet, firelit air of the study, a flood that did not purify, but left destruction in its wake, broken branches and jagged edges of Yuuri’s heart left bare and exposed.

Culpepper didn’t speak, not even when Yuuri told him of the first kiss, the first confession of love. He simply watched Yuuri as he spoke. Yuuri, whose gaze was locked on his own twisting hands, did not see the compassion in his eyes; it was the recognition of a pain that lay close against his bones, like calling to like.  

Finally, Yuuri stopped speaking. There was nothing left to say. He had confessed everything there was to confess, had told more than he had ever meant to. And now…

Yuuri looked up through eyes that burned with salt tears. Culpepper’s head was bowed, as though in prayer. He sat that way for a few long, immeasurably long moments, before sitting up.

“Yuuri. I will not lie to you. The pain that you feel is real, but the love that you have shared may not be. Victor probably does not even exist.”

Yuuri felt his heart crack into myriad fragments, shattering beneath the weight of the words that he had hoped he would never hear, would never even think. Culpepper continued regardless, and though his tone was still heavy with kindness, his words brooked no opposition.

“You understand, I am sure, that I cannot allow this to continue. For your own safety, you will take dreamless sleep potion every night until I am sure you are out of danger. And I will know whether or not it has been done.”

Yuuri nodded mutely, too drained to feel the pain that he knew lurked in his heart, waiting for him to falter.

“I am not angry with you, Yuuri. Older and wiser wizards than you have been taken in by such creatures. Do not blame yourself.” Culpepper smiled sadly, and Yuuri knew what his next words would be. “However, I am sure you already know that I cannot allow you to continue working on this project. It’s too dangerous. I want you to go home, and collect all your research materials, and send them to me as soon as you can. You’re not in trouble; I will tell the Medical School that you have finished your punishment, and you can move on with your life.”

Yuuri nodded again. None of this mattered. None of it. _Victor_ …

Culpepper stood, surging to his feet like a living mountain. “This is not the end of your story, Yuuri. You will go on to do great things; trust me, the pain will grow less with every day that passes.”

Yuuri stood too, his feet feeling too large for his body, his limbs heavy and unresponsive. Culpepper reached forwards, and gripped Yuuri’s shoulders with his two enormous hands. Yuuri looked up into the weathered, sun-lined face, and knew that Culpepper was lying. The pain didn’t grow less. It just grew more familiar.

“I’ll write to you again soon, Yuuri. Take your dreamless sleep tonight; I will know if you haven’t. I know you hate me for it; but I cannot allow you to endanger yourself further.”

Yuuri shook his head, movements stiff and slow. “I don’t…I don’t hate you.” And it was true; he felt nothing at all, other than a numb, ice-cold blankness that he prayed would last long enough to get him home. “I’m so…I’m so sorry.” Yuuri’s voice trailed away into a whisper, and another tear escaped. “I let you down, after all.”

Culpepper tightened his grip on Yuuri’s shoulders, and his deep voice was intent, burning with sincerity. “You have not let me down. You told me the truth; you saved yourself. That’s all I could ask for. Go home, Yuuri. Go home and heal, and if you need anything, you know how to find me.”

Yuuri nodded, unable to speak. He walked to the door, and raised a hand to open it; but out of the corner of his eye, on Culpepper’s desk, he caught sight of his name and paused. It was an unrolled scroll of parchment, in very familiar handwriting. Yuuri could just make out his own name, the word ‘dream’, and a signature that he could have forged perfectly, he knew it so well. _Phichit_.

The revelation did nothing to crack Yuuri’s cold numbness; he did not feel betrayed, or angry. He didn’t feel anything at all.

 

Culpepper watched Yuuri leave. 

As the door shut behind him, Culpepper sat down on the ancient sofa with a long drawn out sigh, the wounds in his heart that he had just reopened throbbing with undiminished pain.

That poor boy. That poor, poor boy. He felt responsible for the entire mess; he should have monitored him more closely, should have noticed the signs….

Culpepper pulled out the ring from where it hung around his neck, and studied the diamond in the glow of the fire. Those memories were worn thin with repetition by now, but they had lost none of their anguish.

He could still see her on the dark of his closed eyelids, could see her just as clearly as he had that first night; hair streaming like a pale banner in the wind, skin glowing in the moonlight like liquid silver, her eyes wide and startled…

_Ula_. Gods, but he still loved her.

And even all these years later, Augustus Culpepper could never be sure, could never quite let go of the thought…

Had she really been a monster? When she had run to him, soaked in blood and with eyes as black as a moonless night, fangs bared, had she really been planning his death? Or had it been to beg, to plead with him to stay despite the fact she was a monster, a siren, a killer?

The question was a poisonous thorn that was forever lodged in his heart; Culpepper knew it was a wound that would never heal. He could only hope that Yuuri would do better than he had. He was young, he was bright, he had his whole future ahead of him; surely he would recover, in time. Surely he would be spared this pain.

Culpepper shook his head briskly, trying to shake off the memories, and stood up. He headed towards the desk, and unfurled Phichit’s letter again, rereading the already familiar words.

_Please, help him._

He would. He would help Yuuri, and he would keep his vow to himself all those years ago.

_No one else will die because they loved a monster._

***********

  
  


Yuuri wasn’t sure, later, how he managed to apparate back to Noke Street. It was a blur, a melange of inchoate pain.

He stumbled out of the apparition point by Temple station, and trudged on numb feet towards the archway. Every step echoed in his mind with the same refrain.

_Victor. Victor. Victor._

He reached the archway, and looked up at the brightly blooming flowers, still dusted with an incongruous covering of snow. Yuuri stepped forwards, felt the wards wash over his numb skin, and found himself in the familiar courtyard; he had stood here a thousand times before, but he had never been so glad to see it as he was now. He was nearly home. Nearly able to let the pool of clinging black despair swallow him whole.

The courtyard was peaceful, and silent; completely deserted. Snow covered the ground, hardly touched by the day’s traffic other than a circular path that had been dug around the fountain that bubbled quietly in the centre of the lawn, its water glittering in the starlight.

_Maiden’s love,_ Yuuri thought, the legend bubbling up sluggishly from somewhere in the back of his mind. _Meant to heal the broken hearted._

His feet were stumbling forwards before he had realised he was moving. The snow broke and crumbled around his calves, almost reaching his knees; it was cold, so cold, but he hardly noticed. He knew when he reached the lawn that was buried beneath the snow when he heard metal clinking beneath his feet; he was treading on the carpet of knuts thrown to the fountain for luck.

Yuuri reached the fountain, and grabbed at the rough stone that surrounded it. He had never been this close to Maiden’s Love before; it was meant to be bad luck to trample on the offerings left by the passers-by. Yuuri didn’t care. The water was completely clear, dark in the night air, burbling softly in a continuous stream.

Yuuri reached one frozen hand forwards, and cupped some of it in his palm. Half–crazed hope swirled in his mind, inarticulately begging God, the universe, _anyone_ who would listen, for this to work. For the legend to be true, just this once.

He raised the palmful of water from Maiden’s Love to his lips, and drank.

It was cold, and had the faintly metallic aftertaste of snowmelt. Yuuri stood, shivering, by the fountain; his robes were too thin for such a long time outdoors, but he barely noticed.

He waited.

And waited.

And…

Yuuri fell to his knees. Knuts dug into his skin through his robes, sharp and painful and burning cold, but he didn’t even try to move; he reached up and gripped the edge of the fountain, digging his palms against the sharp edge of the stone as though he were suspended over a precipice and it was his only handhold.

Yuuri felt the numbness beginning to recede, and the pain that lapped at the edge of his heart threatened to overwhelm him.

_No, no, no. It has to work. It has to._

He wasn’t sure how long he sat there in the snow, fighting a losing battle. It could have been minutes, or hours. Yuuri wondered if he was freezing to death, and found that he didn’t much care.

“Yuuri?”

Yuuri looked up. Framed in the gateway to Noke Street, wearing a warm cloak and a horror-struck expression, was Phichit.

In his mind’s eye, Yuuri saw the letter. His name. And Phichit’s name. And the reason that he couldn’t see…that he would never see Victor…

Rage pulsed in his heart, white hot and consuming. He stood up, snow falling away from his cloak, half-melted in his hair.

Yuuri reached into his sleeve, and pulled out his wand. Never, never in their decade of friendship, had he raised a wand against Phichit in anything other than fun, but now his heart was broken into a thousand painful shards of grit that lodged in his chest like sandpaper, and his mind was spiralling into darkness, and Phichit was the reason. His fault. _His fault._

Yuuri advanced slowly, wand raised. Phichit didn’t move, didn’t take out his own wand; he stood frozen in the gateway, his face torn in anguish.

“ _Why_?”

Yuuri’s voice was poisonous with anguish, and cut the frozen night air like a knife.

Phichit opened his mouth, but no words emerged. Yuuri continued stalking closer, wand tip raised threateningly.

“I said, why? Why would you _do_ this? _Why would you_ -”

Yuuri’s voice rose to a shout, and the tears that had finally stopped spilling began to well again. Phichit’s face was wracked with pain for a moment, and then he was running, covering the space between them in a few ungainly strides. He threw his arms around Yuuri, and pulled him close.

“I had to, Yuuri, I had to, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, you don’t understand, curse me if you want but I'm so sorry!” Phichit murmured in his ear, voice low and hot and frantic. Yuuri was stiff, frozen for a few moments, and a curse was just behind his teeth- but Phichit’s arms were so familiar, his voice so pained, that the vicious impulse died before it could ever be spoken aloud.

Yuuri slumped. He leaned against Phichit, who tightened his grip and fell silent. Yuuri could feel Phichit’s silent tears against his cheek, cold in the frigid air.

They stood that way for a long time. Two figures, entwined in the snowy courtyard, silent in the darkness that was broken only by the soft murmuring of the fountain.

Phichit drew back, and looked into Yuuri’s face with his wide, dark eyes.

“Shall we go home?”

Yuuri nodded soundlessly, and they turned to the gate that would take them back to their flat. Their dilapidated, well-loved, worn in flat.

Phichit took Yuuri’s hand as they walked, and Yuuri felt what was left of his heart ache with gratitude.

“Will you…” Yuuri asked, and then trailed off. Phichit looked at him, and Yuuri tried again. “Can we stay up tonight, for a while? Together, I mean? Like we used to in Hogwarts. I don’t think I can….”

Phichit squeezed his hand, and nodded.

  

**********

  
  
Yuuri and Phichit did not sleep for a long time that night. They sat on one sofa, curled up together as if they were still eleven years old, and this was just a night terror that would all be forgotten by morning.

Phichit’s arms were warm, and felt like home.

Yuuri told him everything, just as he had told Culpepper. Phichit listened, and held Yuuri as he wept. And finally, Yuuri had no more words to spill.

“Yuuri…I’m so sorry.” Phichit tightened his arms around Yuuri’s waist, and leaned back slightly so that Yuuri could see his face. “I had to…I was so worried. You were half-alive, and I was…”

Phichit broke off, and tears slid down his tanned skin, leaving glittering trails.

Yuuri nodded, and reached out to rub them away with his thumb. “Don’t be sorry. Please. Please don’t, Phichit. I can’t believe I didn’t tell you what was happening. I was just so scared of losing him, and I didn't know what to do, and I don’t know if I can…” Yuuri’s voice trailed off, the gaping hole that was Victor’s absence yawning slightly wider in his heart.

Phichit gave a slightly damp chuckle, and half smiled. Even a half smile was dazzling. “Look at us. Nothing’s changed, hm? Except that I couldn’t just wriggle into your bed to take away the problem this time.” Phichit made an attempt at waggling an eyebrow. “Unless you asked, of course.”

Yuuri looked at Phichit’s expression for a moment, and then buried his face in Phichit’s chest, half laughing and half sobbing.

Phichit held him tightly, half-laughing as well. “I love you, you know, Yuuri Katsuki. Always will. No matter what.”

Yuuri’s words were obscured by Phichit’s jumper, but he was sure that he heard a muffled _I love you, too_.

 

 

It was so late that it was early by the time they went to bed. Phichit stood over Yuuri as he drank the dreamless sleep potion, and watched as sank into bed, exhausted and potion-heavy. When he was satisfied that Yuuri was sleeping soundly, Phichit stood and looked around the room.

“ _Accio research_ ,” he murmured quietly, and caught the flurry of books and parchment that stacked itself neatly in his arms. He heard a slight scuffling; one book was half-obscured beneath the bed, trapped by the blankets. Phichit nudged them aside with his foot, and the ancient volume soared to the top of the pile. Phichit caught sight of the mildewed title; _Compendium of Magickal Beastes and Creatures._ He wondered how it had ended up beneath the bed, and smiled slightly at Yuuri’s habitual disdain for tidiness.

Phichit returned to the living room, and shrunk the pile of books down until they would fit in an envelope. He tapped it with his wand, and addressed it to Augustus Culpepper, with a note explaining what the envelope contained, as well as his thanks. He tapped it again, and it disappeared with a tiny puff of smoke, to reappear on a desk in the hospital several miles away.

Phichit sighed, and walked back to Yuuri’s bedroom door. He paused for a moment, cracking it open; Yuuri’s dark hair was spread out across the pillow, the empty potion bottle still held slackly in his nerveless hand.

Phichit padded into the room, and removed the bottle, placing it carefully on the bedside table next to Yuuri’s glasses.

Phichit brushed Yuuri’s tangled hair away from his forehead, and let his hand rest on Yuuri’s cheek for a moment. Yuuri’s face was so young, so carefree in sleep; Phichit felt tears welling in his eyes again, and dashed them away impatiently.

He watched Yuuri’s chest rise and fall with the gentle, slow breaths of potion-sleep. He still didn’t fully understand what had happened; apparently neither did Yuuri, nor Culpepper, for that matter. All that mattered was the pain in Yuuri’s voice, and the heartbreak that Yuuri had tried to hard to keep locked in as he told the strange tale.

Phichit made a vow to himself, sitting in that darkened room with his hand on Yuuri’s cheek. Whatever it took, he would see Yuuri smile again. Not a faint, tear-streaked smile, but the blazing, radiant beam that lived in Phichit’s heart.

Yuuri snuffled slightly in his sleep. Phichit smiled, and crept away, closing the bedroom door softly behind him.

Yuuri slept, for the first time in weeks, without dreaming.

 

*******  
  


Victor sat in the garden, his heart filled with anticipation. It was nearing mid-morning; the latest that Yuuri had ever arrived had been midday. He would be here soon.

The flowers waved gently in the light breeze, fanning their petals upwards towards the blue sky many miles above. They were a riot of colour; the blue-black roses, Yuuri’s favourite, shone richly in the mellow sunlight, like spilled ink.

Victor tilted his face upwards towards the warmth, smiling slightly, and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

At midday, he stood up, no longer smiling. He began to pace the formal gardens, their long, straight paths stretching off into the distance ahead of him. The sunlight still shone cheerfully, but it had taken on a subtly sinister hue in Victor’s mind.

Yuuri was keyed into the wards; Victor had made sure of that. He would know the second he stepped foot in the estate, or even if he arrived in the uncounted acres of forest that surrounded it.

_But what if...?_

Victor resolutely denied the thought, refusing to entertain it for even a second. Worry coalesced in a suffocating cloud around his heart, but he fought it off, sure that Yuuri would arrive any moment.

Victor continued pacing the gardens. He paused for a moment to pick one of the blue-black roses, tucking it behind his ear as Yuuri had done that first time, the first time they had said the words which had shattered the shell of ice around Victor’s heart entirely.

It wasn’t until the sun set that Victor panicked. He had reached the lake; he fell to his knees, and stared at the last ridge of the dying light as it disappeared over the horizon.

_No. No, no. Please._

Victor watched the last rays disappearing from the garden, their golden fingers lovingly caressing the flowers before disappearing.

_Maybe if…_

Victor stood, surging to his feet in an ungainly scramble, and then he was running, racing the sun.

He reached the wooden door to the garden and flung it open, tearing through it and up the spiral staircase, to the tower where his bedroom stood at the very top; his thighs burned and his breath felt like fire in his chest, but he forced himself to take the steps three at a time, willing himself to run faster, _faster_ …

Victor reached the top of the tower, and dashed forwards into his bedroom.

The high, arched windows took up most of one wall; he ran to them, pressing his hands up against the glass, panting so heavily that his breath misted the view before him.

The sun’s rays had not disappeared yet, this high up; Yuuri had a few more minutes.

Victor stood, chest heaving, silver hair sticking to his sweat-slicked forehead. The sun continued to sink, lower, lower…

It was gone.

_Yuuri isn’t coming._

Victor wasn’t sure when his gasping breaths turned to sobs, but suddenly he was falling, was kneeling before the high windows as the light died. He pressed his forehead against the cool glass, and allowed his tears to fall unheeded on to the cold stone floor.

He had always known that his own personal miracle might not last forever; but this was too soon, he had not had enough time, he had not said a thousand things he ought to have said…

Victor’s breath slowly evened, and he regained control of himself enough to look up, to look out over the endless forest ranged before him. The stars were just beginning to emerge, their glittering pinpricks of light beautiful and hateful, signalling another night.

Victor dragged himself upright, and collapsed onto his bed, the thick mattress cushioning his aching muscles, but bringing his heart no relief.

_Please,_ he thought desperately, _please. Mama, Papa, whoever is listening. Please bring him back. Just for one more night._

Victor felt another tear slide soundlessly down his face.

_Just one more night._

_Please._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ........I made myself sad.
> 
> To anyone reading this who's thinking I'm a monster: I'M SORRY, I DID WARN YOU IT WOULD BE ROUGH, PLEASE DON'T HATE ME, I PROMISE IT ENDS WELL! I have to confess though- I did have a plan for this fic (which I'm not using, because I just cannot do that to them) where it ends BADLY. Like the SADDEST THING. Ask me once I've finished this fic and I'll tell you what it was. Also the next one or two chapters will still be pretty sad, but in a different sort of way; there will be more fireworks before the end. I think there's just another three or four chapters to go now. The end is in sight!
> 
> Cards on the table- I love Phichit. He is my favourite. I might write an entire fic dedicated to how much I love him, because he is the best friend, and the best boy.
> 
> I really hope you enjoyed this ridiculously angsty chapter! Please leave a comment to let me know what you think- it really does brighten my day by ten thousand percent, even if it's just a smiley face.
> 
> Also come and say hi to me on tumblr! I'm at cox-orange-pippin. I need friends. Please be my friend. (Also if you have any one-shot prompts, I would love to try them, because I'm trying to get better at not turning one shots into huge stories.)
> 
> Love to everyone reading this as always- thank you so much for sticking with this so far <3


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